When his father died, Léo Garoyan wanted to give up BMX and school. He was twelve or thirteen and had shared his earliest bike rides with him. His mother found a school in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he could combine his education with training. “That was where I rediscovered my love of BMX and, above all, of life,” he recalled years later in an interview with Sunn. He spent two years there, regained his form and began taking a different approach to the sport.
On 31 October, aged 26, he won his first elite BMX Racing World Cup round in Sarasota, United States. He had already won U23 rounds, but this time he prevailed in the senior category. The Union Cycliste Internationale -UCI- confirmed the French rider’s victory in a discipline where competitors race together over jumps and banked corners. The result adds another milestone to a story Garoyan often tells through the people who supported him.
A question in a park in Fréjus
His introduction to BMX began with a chance conversation. He was riding with his father in a park in Fréjus when a woman asked whether he raced BMX. Neither knew much about it, but her explanation sparked their curiosity and they went to try it in Sainte-Maxime. “I got my first racing licence the following week,” he recalled in ‘Sportmag’. The combination of speed, jumps and racing other children immediately appealed to him.
During his teenage years, he went through another period when he came close to giving up. Several house moves for family reasons had unsettled him, and coach Simon Duchêne helped him rediscover his enthusiasm. Garoyan has thanked him for that support in several interviews. In 2018, while riding for the club in Sarrians, he explained what he had found there: “Above all, I was looking for stability for my family, and that’s what I found here.”
The family he found in his clubs
Moving up from junior racing also required patience. “Stepping up to elite was a shock. There are two worlds between it and junior racing,” he told ‘L’Est Républicain’ in 2021. He recalled the support of his family and his partner at the time, Camille, as well as advice from her father, Arnaud Prétot, who shared his experience of high-performance sport. During that period, Garoyan joined BMX Besançon, where he already knew several coaches. “It’s a second family,” he said. He could train with younger riders, pushing them to improve while they pushed him in return.
He had become junior world champion in 2018 and won another world title in the U23 category in Nantes in 2022. After that final, he explained that he wanted to get close to the crowd, enjoy the moment and pay tribute to his father and grandfather, whom he missed every day. Family also featured in his pre-race routines. His mother would repeat an expression that he made his own: “Step by step.”
The Paris dream and a difficult period
In October 2025, he chose to speak publicly about experiencing depression. A shoulder injury sustained in February 2024 at the World Cup in Rotorua, New Zealand, had ended his hopes of selection for the Paris Olympics. “It was a childhood dream; I used to talk about it with my dad,” he told ‘Le Dauphiné Libéré’. In July 2026, the same newspaper described him as gradually emerging from that difficult period. His account helps explain what trying to reach the Games meant to him beyond securing a place on the team.
Away from the track, his interests take a different form. “Sport is my job. Off the track, I’m a big fan and collector of shoes and caps,” he told ‘TOPO’ in 2023. At the time, he was considering opening a fashion-related business after his racing career. That enthusiasm also surfaced when he talked about his bike: the feature he particularly loved was its glittery finish. He cheerfully described himself as very ‘bling bling’.
A McFlurry before race day
In his 2022 interview with Sunn, he revealed another habit: “The night before a race, I have a McFlurry.” On race day, he would shower, get ready and put on his headphones. Music had been part of his routine for years. In 2018, he described a short sequence before the start: loud music, a thought for his mother, another for his father, and then the race.
As a child, he also tried horse riding, motocross, football, futsal and tennis; later, he took up golf. On a bike, he rode on the road and went mountain biking, although what excited him most was still waiting at the top of a BMX start ramp. “The adrenaline and the speed. I love it,” he told ‘L’Est Républicain’. He described it with a precise image: reaching around 60 kilometres per hour at the bottom of the ramp, his heart racing at 200 beats per minute, and feeling the other riders behind him.
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