One of the Valley’s racing legends recently made history.
When Kim Hayashi was a kid, her dad took her to visit the offices of the American Bicycle Association in Gilbert. She remembers walking down the hallways, looking up at framed photos of members of the BMX Hall of Fame.
"And you just, you're like, 'wow, that's really cool. Like they're legends, like these guys are icons,' and as a 12-year-old, you just never think that maybe one day you would end up on the wall with all these really, really great people," Kim Hayashi said.
But in September, that's exactly what happened.
Hayashi was the 2024 Women's BMX Hall of Fame inductee.
Hayashi's Hall of Fame credentials are undeniable. In the early 2000s, she won five straight National Bicycle League titles and won the junior women's division at the Union of International Cyclists World Championship. That's just a tiny fraction of her resume. But even as she was walking up to the Hall of Fame podium, Hayashi found herself in disbelief. She'd never really stopped to think about how unlikely her story is.
"I probably didn't even fall in love with BMX the first time that I rode. Being 12, I was much older than a lot of kids who started racing because even my brother started racing at 8," Hayashi said.
Hayashi's brother is actually the reason she started riding. The family was spending the majority of their weekends at the BMX track.
"And my mom just really came to me one day and said, 'we're going to do this as a family, so you're going to participate;" Hayashi said. "I said, 'I'm, I'm good.; And she said, 'no, no, no, you're going to. I'm, I'm forcing you to do this.'”
Hayashi's reluctance faded pretty quickly.
"I raced my first race against a bunch of boys, and I won. And that sort of competitiveness in me just really wanted to continue, because what are their sport, like I'd never really played any other sports where I was beating boys. So I think that's what really got me hooked," Hayashi said.
Hayashi kept racing, and she kept winning. She says she's always been small in stature, 4' 11” to be exact. And BMX racing was the first sport she'd ever played where that was an advantage.
" My dad and I sat down and figured like, I can't go toe to toe with girls who are, you know, 20, 30, 40 pounds heavier than me or a foot taller than me. So, I think we really hunkered down on, 'hey, off the start is like really where I had to be successful,' and so I really focused on on just that and being short in stature and being as as stocky as I am, that sort of powerfulness is really where I excelled," Hayashi said.
Prior to this, Hayashi says she had viewed her body as a bit of an obstacle. Going into middle school, she'd gained weight and kept hoping that she would get a growth spurt that would even things out. But the growth spurt never came.
"It ended up being like a blessing in disguise because it turned into a muscle, yeah, I very quickly like was able, I mean, I couldn't even believe my dad bought us a squat rack for inside our garage. And we would be in there a couple times, you know, in the evening throughout the week and we would stack on. It got to a point where I was like 16 and every single weight that we had in our garage, we put on on the bar and I was squatting it," Hayashi said.
Before long, Hayashi had a nickname on the circuit: “Lil Kim.” I watched some videos of her races on YouTube, and when she wins, it's not close. She seems to burst out of the gate already moving at top speed. By the time the race hits the first turn, she's already several bike lengths ahead of everyone.
But that doesn't mean that any of this was easy for Hayashi.
"Before our main events or our finals, I would be literally throwing up my guts," Hayashi said.
It wasn't that she doubted her skills. It was that she had trouble trusting that they would be there when she needed them.
"So I was very analytical. So I was that person that, like, 'oh man, I have to get out of the gate. I have to move over. I have to do this over the jumps,' and I had practiced it," Hayashi said. "I already knew what I needed to do, and it made me overthink to the point where it would make me sick."
Hayashi's dad found a doctor who helped her come up with a healthier pre-race method than overthinking. She started listening to a series of tones on a set of headphones. Hayashi says it made her feel like the star of some Hollywood story about a baseball phenom.
"You know, like in the movies they like slows down, you could see the laces. That's essentially, like, what, how I felt. Like, when I was racing, I, it felt like it was in slow motion like I could feel myself going over the jumps like going, pushing my legs where I needed to, getting the backside that I needed to," Hayashi said.
Meanwhile, everybody pressed up against the fence is watching her fly ahead.
In recent years, BMX Olympians like Brooke Crane and Elise Post have cited Hayashi as an inspiration, which means a lot to her. Hayashi herself never made it to the Olympics. In fact, she says it was Olympic training that ultimately made her decide to stop racing competitively. She was traveling all over the world almost every weekend, pushing herself past her physical limits. And early on, she'd made a deal with herself.
"If there was a day I ever woke up and I didn't want to go ride my bike, I knew I was done," Hayashi said.
When she woke up one day and didn't want to ride, Hayashi knew it was time to stop. But she didn't know what to do next. She went to college and graduated, but she felt lost. If she wasn't getting up every day to hit the gym and then the BMX track, she wasn't sure why she was getting up at all.
"I went through this kind of phase of like, heavy depression. I don't talk about it a lot, but I think it's something that needs to be talked about and more athletes are talking about it, because of that big high and immediately felt overnight, you just become this everyday person where you're not really training for a purpose. I, like, left from traveling the world to delivering Domino's pizzas," Hayashi said.
Hayashi knew she was walking a fine line. She'd seen fellow BMXers stop riding but keep chasing the high they used to get from winning races.
"So they fall into either like drugs, drug abuse, addiction, alcoholism, things of that nature," Hayashi said.
Hayashi credits her family for keeping her focused on the future, instead of trying to relive the past. She didn't love delivering Domino's pizza, but that job led to a gig at a wine bar, which led to an interview at Sake Haus in downtown Phoenix, where she's now a managing partner.
That's where Hayashi decided she wanted to dedicate the rest of her life to hospitality. She loves everything about working at the restaurant. Talking to guests, planning events, tinkering with the cocktail menu.
"I don't think I've ever gotten up in the morning and said, 'I don't want to go to work,'" she said.
Much like with BMX, it seems like when Hayashi started working at Sake Haus, she instantly did the restaurant equivalent of like racing to the front.
"Oh yeah, yeah, yeah," Hayashi said.
Is it because she has to find that racing high somewhere?
"Yeah, yeah. All the characteristics that made you successful as a BMX racer are all things that you can use to make you successful," Hayashi said. "In what I call the real world, right? Or, in, outside of BMX. I'm just out there competing because I want to win."
