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'What the hell': Official causes crazy crash in Olympics BMX

Dutch BMX rider Niek Kimmann was fortunate to walk away unscathed after a terrifying collision with a careless official during practice. Picture: Twitter/@niekkimmann
Dutch BMX rider Niek Kimmann was fortunate to walk away unscathed after a terrifying collision with a careless official during practice. Picture: Twitter/@niekkimmann

One of the favourites for the men's BMX gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics has walked away largely unscathed after a horror collision with an official during practice.

Dutch rider Niek Kimmann was caught off-guard and unsighted after an official strolled onto the back straight of the Tokyo course.

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Despite cries of 'watch out' from nearby spectators and competitors, there was no preventing the brutal collision.

Fortunately, both Kimmann and the official were uninjured.

Though his medal chances weren't seriously affected by the accident, Kimmann was furious with the official in the moments afterwards, before taking to social media a short time later to wish him well.

"So this is what happened today. Hit an official that wanted to cross the 2nd straight. Hope the official is O.K," he wrote.

"My knee is sore, but will do my best to be ready for Thursday! Thanks everyone for the messages, appreciate it!"

After getting to his feet, Kimmann yelled out 'what the hell?' at the official - evidently having calmed down somewhat before posting on Twitter.

The Dutch team was the victim of further bad luck, with men's mountain bike favourite Mathieu van der Poel wiping out of the race after mistakenly believing there would be a ramp to land on after a specific feature.

Van der Poel claimed a ramp had been in place in the landing zone of the Sakura Drop feature during reconnaissance, but was not present during the race.

"I didn’t know. The ramp was there during the recon. I only heard they removed it during the test event," he posted on Twitter.

Ash Barty's stunning response to Olympic singles heartbreak

Ash Barty has bounced back from her devastating loss in the opening round of the Olympics tennis singles by marching into the quarter-finals of the doubles.

The World No.1 was dumped out of the singles event on Sunday in a shock loss to Spaniard Sara Sorribes Tormo.

However the Aussie star rebounded on Monday, teaming with doubles partner Storm Sanders to progress to the final eight with a 6-4 6-4 defeat of China's Xu Yifan and Yang Zhaoxuan.

"Of course yesterday was disappointing," Barty said.

"I'm not going to hide behind the fact that I wanted to do really well here, but we move on pretty quickly in tennis.

"I've really enjoyed getting out there with Storm today and we're still on the hunt for a medal for Australia."

In her fifth Olympics, Sam Stosur also reached the third round with partner Ellen Perez in a tough 7-6 (7-3) 7-5 win against Romanians Monica Niculescu and Raluca Olaru.

The Australian pairs are in opposite sides of the draw and wouldn't meet until the final if they continue their winning ways.

But it wasn't all joy for the Aussie tennis contingent on Monday.

John Millman and Alja Tomlanjovic both lost tight second-round singles matches, Millman fighting back after Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina had served for the match in the second set to eventually lose 6-4 6-7 (7-4) 6-3 in almost three hours.

Tomljanic was up a set and a break before fourth seed Elina Svitolina produced some clutch tennis in a 4-6 6-3 6-4 win.

And Max Purcell couldn't continue his charmed run, ousted 6-3 6-0 by Germany's Dominik Koepfer.

With AAP

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