A former teaching assistant at a Saffron Walden school is on course to defend her Olympic title at Paris 2024.

Beth Shriever previously worked at Dame Bradbury's School before turning pro, winning the gold at Tokyo 2020 in the process.

And she breezed into the BMX racing semi-finals in France with three straight wins in the heats.

Shriever has twice been crowned world champion since bursting onto the scene with her success in Tokyo three years ago, but lost that title in May when she suffered a broken collarbone in the semi-finals of the event in Rock Hill.

The 25-year-old looks to have bounced back in fine form as she bossed all three of her runs, winning each by more than a second.

The Finchingfield rider finished the night ranked second overall behind Australia’s Saya Sakakibara, who set marginally faster times than Shriever in all three of her runs.

American Alise Willoughby, who took the world title after Shriever’s crash, also took three wins out of three.

Shriever’s Tokyo success is best remembered for the famous photograph of her being held aloft by team-mate Kye Whyte, who had taken silver in the men’s race just moments before.

But the chances of a repeat may be slim based on this evidence as Whyte looked off the pace in Thursday’s quarter-finals.

The Londoner came in fifth in his first run, leaving him outside the top 12 who would safely advance without facing a run-off.

Whyte rose to 10th in the standings after a second run in which he moved up from fifth to third when Colombia’s Mateo Carmona Garcia and the Netherlands’ Jaymio Brink collided in front of him.

Whyte was down in fifth again on his third run but powered past Gonzalo Molina on the final straight to finish fourth, keeping his 10th place overall and avoiding the need to take part in the last chance race.