Tory Nyhaug of Coquitlam made a tactical error Wednesday but he's looking to learn from it when he pedals into the quarter-finals Thursday (tomorrow) in BMX cycling at the London 2012 Olympics.
Ranked fifth in the world in supercross racing, Nyhaug finished 20th out of 32 riders at the Olympic Park facility, giving him a tougher lane position in the next round.
It's not exactly where Nyhaug hoped to be situated, especially after having ruptured his spleen in May for the second time in less than two years and needed to have the non-vital organ removed, rendering him a bit of a darkhorse going into the Olympics.
"Definitely didn't get the right set-up going into the first corner," he said. "I just made a mistake.
"I was definitely going for it. I had a lot of speed in the second straight and I just kind of made mistake on the first corner and it kind of killed my momentum the rest of the lap. I worked hard, I just made a mistake. The track's tough, it happens."
Nyhaug finished in 39.515 seconds, nearly two full ticks behind the fastest rider, Raymon van der Biezen of The Netherlands, who clocked in at 37.779, half a second better than Joris Daudet of France. Twan van Gendt, another Dutch rider, was third.
