Jaclyn Wilson

Throughout the annuls of Australian BMX history, there has never been a career quite like that of Jaclyn Wilson. Her story is unique because she has been so successful, for so long. She has been collecting Australian BMX #1 plates for nearly 40 years and she plans on winning a few more.

Jaclyn’s career started in 1981 as a three-year-old at the Kangaroo Flat BMX track in Bendigo, Victoria. By the age of seven she had claimed fifth place at the Australian titles in Launceston, Tasmania, and travelled to Whistler, Canada to finish a creditable fourth place at her first World Championships.  It was only a few short years later that Jaclyn set the wildly ambitious plan to win the world title in Chile in 1988.  Punching out countless hill sprints every morning in the icy predawn light of winter in her hometown, Bendigo, Jaclyn trained the house down, like no other 10-year-old in the world.  True to her word, Jaclyn won in Santiago, returning home a world champion!

A year later she claimed the very first of her more than 25 national #1 plates and finished second at the world titles in Brisbane.  This was the year that her parents made the remarkable decision to pack up the family home, sell the family business, and drive to the Gold Coast from Bendigo to improve Jaclyn’s opportunities as a dedicated young BMX racer. The move to the Miami BMX Club training environment paid immediate dividends for Jaclyn as she dominated her opposition in 1990, winning both the national and world titles for the second time. Despite fierce competition from close rivals Renee McKean and Helena Giblett, Jaclyn was simply unbeatable.

By her early teens, Jaclyn had embarked on a hairdresser career, and her dedication to training and racing took a back seat. In her 20s, she returned to Bendigo, settled down, ran a successful hairdressing salon and had a family. Then, as a spritely 32-year-old mother of two, Jaclyn reappeared at the track.  Thirteen years after last competing in a BMX race, she lined up at the national titles in Perth and duly won the 20-inch 17 plus class and 30-34 cruiser class #1 plates. Later that year she reclaimed her age class world title, an honour she had last won 19 years previously. Jaclyn Wilson was back.

Since then, Jaclyn has amassed another twenty-one national titles (to 2024) and another world crown in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2010, at the age of 33 she entered the elite women’s class at the Shepparton Aussie titles and claimed the Australia #2 plate against women almost half her age. Jaclyn knows that her success has come through relentless training and dedication to her sport.  She also acknowledges that she would not have been the sportswomen she has been without the love and support of her wonderful parents and godparents.