Rimu Nakamura won the men's park title at the UCI BMX Freestyle World Cup season opener in Montpellier, France, on Sunday.
Nakamura, who finished fifth in the first-ever Olympic men's BMX freestyle final in Tokyo last summer, earned 95.30 points for his first World Cup win since the 2019 season finale. Australia's Logan Martin, the Tokyo Olympic gold medalist, was second with 94.50.
"It feels amazing to win my first international event in a long time," Nakamura said. "The level of competition felt higher than ever."
The UCI World Cup was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, making it back-to-back victories for Nakamura.
BMX freestyle was among the new disciplines added to the Olympic program for the Tokyo Games. In BMX park competitions, riders execute a sequence of tricks on different obstacles contained within a park.