Dutch BMX ace collides with hapless Olympic official who strayed onto track – and star now faces fitness battle to compete (VIDEO)

The Dutch team has been involved in another fiasco as ex-BMX world champion Niek Kimmann crashed into an official on a training run at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, with footage of the incident going viral.

Taking place at the Ariake Urban Sports Park, the mix-up saw the 25-year-old come out of a banked corner at full speed while performing a string of alternating jumps on the course's second straight. 

For some reason, though, an individual later identified on social media by Kimmann as being an official decided it was a good time to cross his path, causing the pair to collide and hit the tarmac hard.

Kimmann rose to his feet first and then immediately went back to check on his crash partner.

On Twitter, he said that he had been experiencing knee pain in the hours that followed the collision, but was hopeful of making a full recovery for the official competition's first rounds on Thursday. 

"So this is what happened today. Hit an official that wanted to cross the 2nd straight. Hope the official is O.K," he wrote via his account, while also sharing a video seen by over 500,000 people.

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

In the comments section, users made wisecracks such as: "And this, kids, is why you always look before crossing the road."

"Like a tourist in Amsterdam," it was said of the official, in a nod to how visitors to the European destination constantly have to try and avoid oncoming bicycle traffic.

"Don't you have a bell?" Kimmann was asked. 

"Hope the damage is not too bad and you can start [on Thursday]. That official may suffer for a few weeks..."

This is the second such occurrence in the last few days for the Dutch, with Mathieu van der Poel on the Netherlands' mountain bike team crashing out of the cross-country race despite being one of the top riders expected to land a medal.

Suffering a hip injury in the process, he embarked on a rocky descent as part of his pre-ride and was rushed to hospital after somersaulting over his handlebars.

Van der Poel's teammate Milan Vader explained that his colleague had forgotten about the removal of a wooden ramp.

"It may be hard to say, but we talked about that during lunch today," he said to NOS.

"Mathieu said: 'Gosh everyone jumps there.' I asked: 'Won't you, then?' He said, 'No, I'll roll off that plank,' then I said that they had removed that board at the test event in 2019 for the competition."

Van der Poel also confirmed he thought the plank would be installed during the race.

"I was not aware of it – that plank was there during the reconnaissance. I only heard that it had been removed at the test event," he said.

On Instagram, he captioned a photo of his horror crash with "I don’t know what to say, but I’ll be back", and congratulated Team GB gold medalist Tom Pidcock.