It's that initial shock that hits you that you just won the Olympics, and then you're celebrating.

You're jumping up and down with your team and with your coaches, they hang a gold medal around your neck, and they announce for the first time ever your name, Olympic Champion.

-This enormous, huge weight of this tragedy that I've gone through just slipped away.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -My name is Connor Fields, and I am an Olympic gold medalist in the sport of BMX race.

♪♪♪ I moved to Vegas when I was four, so really, I don't remember anything else.

I loved growing up in Vegas.

When I was seven years old, I liked riding my bike.

I was constantly popping wheelies and jumping off curbs, and my mom took me and my bike to the bike shop one day because I had a flat tire.

And at the bike shop, she found a flyer advertising the local BMX racing track.

If my mom hadn't found the flyer for the BMX track that day, I might never have discovered BMX racing.

So I started when I was 7 years old, and the first step was racing at the state level.

From there I progressed to the regional level by about the age of 10.

By the age of 11 or 12, I was racing on the national series all around the country and did so much better than myself or anybody else really expected.

Growing up, BMX racing was not in the Olympics.

In 2005 when I was 12 years old, the International Olympic Committee voted to include BMX racing into the Olympic Games.

When I was 15, I watched the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China.

And I watched Team USA win a couple of medals, and I decided that this was what I wanted to do.

And so at 15, that was when I really started to take things seriously.

Things started coming pretty quickly, and I decided to turn professional at 16.

That was 2009.

Obviously, there were some sacrifices that I had to make.

I didn't get to go to the football games on Friday nights.

I didn't get to go to high school parties.

I didn't get to have a normal childhood.

But instead, I was in France my senior year competing for Team USA.

I started to win races, major races, major international races.

Before I knew it, I blinked and I was 19 years old and I was getting ready to represent Team USA at the London Olympic Games.

I was so inexperienced.

I had been professional for a couple of years, never raced a lot of major international events that I was racing in the lead-up to London.

I was a year graduated from high school.

As a young athlete, I really viewed it in an immature way where it was, I'm there to win.

I'm not there to compete.

I'm not there to enjoy representing Team USA.

I'm not focused on the process.

I'm only thinking about the outcome.

And I won every single one of my heat races, my semifinals, and I was the Number 1 seed in the finals of the London 2012 Olympics.

And I completely blew it, and that was devastating.

You know, when you're that age, you don't really understand that life will go on and things like that.

And I had to wait four years to "maybe" have another chance.

And that was very hard.

I went through depression.

It took a lot out of me, but it was a lesson that I ultimately had to learn.

As we got into the 2016 Olympic year, I was doing really well at a lot of events.

I had won the National Championships.

I was getting podiums at World Cups.

Everything was on track for me to go into the Olympics as one of the favorites.

And during a training accident in April, I shattered my wrist.

I ended up having a five-hour surgery, getting a bone graft, five screws, multiple plates.

It was a whole mess.

I only made the team on a discretionary nomination, and I barely even made it to the starting line in Rio.

My wrist was still technically broken.

The doctor couldn't legally clear me.

If it was any other event other than the Olympics, I wouldn't have raced with a broken wrist.

But being that it was the Olympics and that it only comes around once every four years, I was legitimately willing to break my wrist again to try.

That's how bad I wanted this goal.

I dedicated my entire life to this goal.

I had made so many sacrifices to get to this point to have a chance that nothing was going to stop me from trying.

I learned the hard way in London, where I won everything leading up to that final and I didn't win the final, that none of the other stuff matters.

So my entire mindset going into the Olympics in Rio was, do what you got to do to make it to the final, and then make that final count.

I was not the Number 1 seed this time like I was in London.

But in that final, I had the best race of my life.

I executed to 100% of my abilities, which was my goal.

I rounded the first corner in second place behind my teammate, the fellow American.

I just went for it, and I was able to advance past my teammate.

I do remember as I rounded the final corner kind of realizing that I was winning, and I had this brief moment of shock.

Then I had to like remind myself it's not over yet, like focus, get back into it.

You win the race, you cross the finish line, and it's that initial shock that hits you that you just won the Olympics.

And then you're celebrating, you're jumping up and down with your team and with your coaches.

It's excitement.

It's relief.

It's pride.

It's thankfulness.

All these at the same time.

A few minutes later, you go to the podium, and they hang a gold medal around your neck while they raise the U.S. flag and they play the National Anthem.

And they announce for the first time ever, your name, Olympic Champion.

And I live in Las Vegas.

At 23 years old, to win the Olympics, not a bad place to go home to.

You know, you have that high, that feeling of winning the Olympics.

You know what it feels like.

There is nothing in this world that is going to compare to that.

So of course I wanted to do it again.

I continued to try to win the race in front of me, try to win the next race.

So as we get into 2020, I'm winning races.

I'm in great shape, everything's on track, and then COVID hit.

(Governor Sisolak) We're all aware of the gravity of the COVID-19 crisis around the world and right here in Nevada.

-For the first time in the history of the Olympics, the Olympics is postponed.

So there's not really a playbook of how you deal with this.

And throughout the entire year of 2020, I think everybody was kind of wondering, are the Olympics actually going to happen next year?

So mentally, it was an exhausting challenge to train for an event that you weren't 100% sure was even going to happen.

But as we got into 2021 and we learned the Olympics were gonna move forward, training camp went as well as it possibly could have, and I was in great shape as I boarded that flight for Tokyo.

I remember telling people in media, I've had a good Olympics, I've had a bad Olympics, I've had a pre-Olympic injury, there's nothing I haven't seen before.

But as we went into it, I knew what I needed to do to be successful.

I crushed it on quarterfinals day.

I won my quarterfinal almost with ease, and I entered the second day as the Number 1 seed on pace to have a shot to repeat as an Olympic champion.

On day number two, there was a rain delay.

I asked one of the coaches if we were on schedule, or what was going on.

And the next thing that I remember was waking up in a hospital bed.

My phone was next to me.

I turned it on, and I saw that the date was five days later and that I had hundreds of messages and missed calls.

And so I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

I open up my phone, and immediately I start seeing videos of the accident.

Slowly kind of piecing everything together.

The crash happened in the last of the semifinal rounds.

It's 15 minutes before the Gold Medal race.

I collided with a French rider, and I went down very hard, face-first.

I had four brain bleeds.

I had injury to my frontal lobe, my parietal lobe, my corpus callosum, and my brainstem.

I collapsed a lung, broke ribs, tore my bicep and shoulder ligaments.

I had to be intubated on the track, and I was in a coma for a few days.

The fact that I'm sitting here today with a fully functioning brain is a miracle.

If you Google Connor Fields, the first thing that comes up is my crash.

It's not that I won the Olympics.

You know, it's not that I was the most successful American BMX racer in history.

It is that I'm the guy who nearly died at the Olympics.

But instead of getting mad about that, I just think about the fact that I'm here and that I can remember all the other races that I did.

And it's kind of easy to move past that.

You know, a lot of people think that I'm crazy and that high-level athletes are crazy, because immediately the first thing I started thinking of was, all right, only three years till the next one.

There's been a delay.

Gotta get it back.

And that was just the competitor in me didn't want to go out that way.

So I went through all the rehabilitation, shoulder reconstruction, you know, about a year's worth of rehab.

And I immediately rode again to see how I felt.

And I actually felt pretty good.

And physically, I was young enough to make one more run, and I really had to wrestle with the fact of do I want to go out that way.

Do I want 22 years of my career and the last thing to be erased that I don't even remember when I was so close to having a chance to repeat as an Olympic champion?

I decided that I had beat the odds once, and I didn't want to even risk it again.

I didn't want to risk hitting my head again, and there's so much more to life outside of BMX racing.

I decided to walk away.

I've been a BMXer since I was a kid.

And so I'm still active in the BMX world in a different ways.

I teach and coach everything from first-time riders all the way to a couple of Olympic hopefuls that are trying to train and compete at the next Olympics.

I've spent my life at a BMX track, and it's my favorite sport.

It's what I know.

I don't think I'll ever be 100% gone from it.

So I did some work with PBS when I was competing, and they did some stories on me in the leadup to the Olympics.

When the opportunity came to be the new host for Outdoor Nevada, I jumped on it.

What an amazing show.

I love the outdoors.

I love mountain biking and fishing and hiking and being active, and I love Nevada.

I'm from here.

Realizing how much natural beauty is in this state.

Obviously we're in the southern part of the state here in Vegas and it's a desert, but you get up north, and there is some incredible scenery.

I also got to see the town of Jarbidge, which is known as the most remote town in the lower 48.

I've watched Vegas go from under a million people, now to over two.

It's been awesome just to watch the city grow and get its own soul, which is really special.

I always love that anywhere I would go around the world, people would ask me where I was from and I would say Las Vegas.

Their eyes would light up, and everybody knew what I was talking about.

♪♪♪ There is a complete misconception between BMX racing and BMX freestyle.

Easiest way to understand is that if you are BMX racing and your hands and feet are not on the bicycle, you made a huge mistake.

I get asked all the time, Can you do a backflip?

The answer is, Not on purpose.

The answer is if I did, I did something very wrong.

BMX racing is from point A to point B as fast as you possibly can.

It's not judged.

There's no tricks.

It is a race.

♪♪♪ What's going on?

Connor Fields here, and I'm going to teach you a little bit about the sport of BMX racing.

We're here at Boulder BMX where I started racing back in 1999.

And I am standing right here on the starting line.

This gate will come up, and up to eight riders will line up in the gate.

The gate goes down, and the race begins.

Where you start the race is determined completely randomly.

After the gate goes down, the first thing that you'll see is the white line down there.

And I'll show you what that means next.

The start of the BMX race is all about strength and explosiveness, as we are the engines for the bicycle.

So you're launching into the race here, and the first thing that you'll see is this white line here.

This is the 30-foot line, and you are not allowed to leave your lane for the first 30 feet.

You've got to go dead straight.

Once you get across this line, you can begin jockeying for positions with the other riders.

Behind me you'll see the lights.

Those lights will flash when the gate is about to drop and tell you it's time to start the race.

This is what BMX tracks are all about and why the kids love it: the jumps.

Every track is gonna have a different layout, different size jumps, different shapes, and that's what makes it fun.

No two tracks are the same.

This jump that I'm on here is called the step-up, because the back side is taller than the front side, meaning that you step up.

You also have singles, doubles, triples, tabletops, and all sorts of other ones.

Another thing that every track has is a berm, a large turn.

Many of them are asphalt because you can carry your speed better around the asphalt than you could if it was dirt.

No two tracks are the same.

But one thing that's the same everywhere you go is the first person across the finish line wins.

♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ ♪ Because what goes around will always go back around ♪ ♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ ♪ Because what goes around will always go back around ♪ ♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ ♪ We know that what goes up wi ll always go right back down ♪ ♪ No nothing can stop us now ♪♪ -If you thought this was cool, make sure you check out USAbmx.com to learn more and find a track near you.

♪♪♪ -My name is Darla Christensen, and pickleball saved my life.

One day my husband came home and he said, Hey, I got transferred.

I'm like, All right, where are we going?

And he's like, Las Vegas!

And I was like, What?

I couldn't even imagine myself moving to Vegas.

And when we got here, it was blazing hot.

I was not thrilled with Vegas.

I started working security.

My first big event, the Route 91 Harvest Festival, big event that's been going on for a long time here in Las Vegas.

And I was pretty excited about it.

We got down to Sunday, which was the last day of the event, and there were 22,000 people there to watch the concert.

We had about an hour left.

I heard two sounds, two shots that sounded like fireworks going off.

I looked to my left, and as I did, I saw two small puffs of smoke going up.

Within three seconds, I heard the voice say, Active shooter.

Active shooter.

Take action.

Most people didn't know what was going on, but they were sort of stunned.

And I just started yelling at people.

Let's go!

Let's go!

Come on.

Follow me.

Suddenly I started hearing screams, people just screaming, and I couldn't figure out what's going on.

And at that point, I started worrying about my sons.

Both my sons were working that night.

One was stage right, and one was stage left.

Over the radio what I was hearing, Body down stage right.

Body down stage left.

And that's alarming.

That's where they're standing.

That's where they're positioned.

And you know they're helping people.

Each time I would go in, someone would scream, Help me, help me.

We're trying to get ambulances there.

So I had just brought someone out to triage and turned to run back in.

I didn't make it in about 25 feet, I see my son, Ryan.

Ryan and I rushed to each other and just hugged each other.

There's bullets flying all around us.

We just hugged each other.

We just held each other.

And I was just so relieved.

He looked at me and said, Mom, I can't do this.

And I said, That's okay.

Go to safety.

You go back to our building there, and he said, I need a mom.

You need to come with me.

And I said, I can't.

Can't leave here without your brother.

So I'm gonna stay, find your brother, we'll meet you there.

You go to safety.

At that point, I then turned my attention back to trying to find my son and, number two, rescuing anyone that I found as I went through that process.

A friend of mine named Cheryl worked in dispatch that evening, and I said, Cheryl, I can't find my son.

We can't find Royce anywhere.

I've been looking for him.

I'm sorry I'm being selfish coming on the radio with this, but I was just hoping maybe you had seen him.

And Cheryl said, It's just mass chaos.

It's mass chaos out there right now.

And so she said, No, but we'll let you know.

So I just went back to rescuing people.

My husband finally called me and said that Royce had borrowed a phone from someone and that he was okay.

He had been behind Jason Aldean's tour bus during the shooting and had survived.

While he was hunkered down, he could feel the shards from the bullets hitting the stage.

So it was holes in everything, just so amazed that all three of us had made it out.

We finally went home at about 3:30 in the morning.

We couldn't go to sleep.

None of us could sleep.

From there, if you've ever gone through an experience that's pretty, pretty rough like this one, you just don't want to leave your house.

PTSD snuck in on us really fast.

And so as we went through this recovery period, we were doing it on our own.

In the end, it ended up being over 750 people injured, over 450 people shot, 58 was the count of people who were killed that night.

I worked from home.

When I wasn't working, we just cried.

We just cried nonstop.

The tragedy of human life that was so horribly removed from the earth for no reason, just so stupid.

And what we had seen, the number of people injured and shot and killed, was a lot.

It's just a lot to see.

And so at that time, you're just, you're just sad.

Just incredibly, incredibly sad.

I just felt nothing.

I had lost all ability to feel anything.

I felt nothing.

There was a numbness that had taken over my life.

My life was spiraling out of control, and the person that I was before the shooting was no longer.

♪♪♪ I had a little dog, a mini schnauzer named Wyatt, who was there for me, never left my side.

He was there with me every day.

He rode in the car with me if I left the house.

Me caring for him is what helped lift myself out of what I was going through.

We had some painters come over to paint the trim here at the house, and I realized that my dog was gone.

I was like, crying, sobbing, trying to find my dog, and searching the neighborhood.

Finally, I checked my phone, and there was a text that said, Hey, we have your dog.

Here's our address.

Come get your dog.

And it was actually across the street from our house.

As I was getting ready to leave, they said, Hey, do you play pickleball?

I was like, No.

Why don't you come down for a lesson?

I'm like, Sure, we will, yeah.

No intent, because it just sounded crazy to me, the whole thing.

So finally, the peer pressure got to me, and my husband and I decided to go down and take a lesson.

I fell in love with the sport right away.

And so then it was, When can I play pickleball next?

At that time, it was a tough sport to break into here in Vegas.

I started a group called Pickleball New Dinkers of Las Vegas that very day hoping to find 16 people to play with.

That's been 2 1/2 years now.

We have almost 6,000 people in my group.

And we do a call-out, and tons of people show up.

I went from this horrible time to just so happy with some of the best friends ever.

I really credit it to kind of saving my life.

When I stepped on the pickleball court, all of the weight, this enormous huge weight of this tragedy that I had gone through, just slipped away and just dropped right off of me.

At this point, I love Las Vegas.

I love that it's such a great destination city.

And for pickleball, you can't go wrong here.

It's really the place I want to be.

I'm really happy here.

♪♪♪ Hi, I'm Darla Christiansen.

I'm here at the rooftop on the fifth floor at the Plaza Hotel where we have 12 dedicated courts.

Let's learn how to play this great game.

It was invented in 1965.

It's a combination of tennis, ping pong, and badminton.

This is a paddle.

This is a pickleball.

The court is 44 feet deep.

It is 20 feet wide.

What's very specific to pickleball is we have something called the non volley zone or the kitchen.

It's 7 feet from the net, and it's an area where you cannot step into if you're going to take volley.

You also can't fall into it after you hit a volley.

However, as long as you let the ball bounce, you can step in there and hit a ball safely over the net.

Scoring in pickleball is pretty easy.

In a rec game we play to 11, win by 2 points.

You need to serve to be able to get a point.

There's a few rules to know about the serve.

Number one, it must be an underhand serve.

You cannot serve overhand or roll it over from the side.

Secondly, you must strike the ball below your waist.

We're going to be serving diagonally across the court.

It must clear the net and the kitchen and the kitchen line on the other side to be considered a good serve.

In addition, you cannot step on or over the line, the white line at the baseline, until after you strike the ball.

So there are four general strokes.

The first one is the serve, groundstroke, a volley, and a dink.

A rule in pickleball is the two-bounce rule.

When the serving team serves, it must first land on the receiving side and bounce.

The receiving side then will hit it back to the serving side.

They must first let it bounce before they hit it.

After that, it's anything goes.

One of the best things about pickleball is that after an hour lesson, you can play this game.

We're going to play the producers of this show, Tommy and Jeremy.

Let's go!

(Jeremy Helal) What did she say?

(Tommy Caprio) That's not in the script.

-Darla, it's not in the script.

-Yeah!

Let's play pickleball.

♪ Hey, they gave me the green light, I'm a go ♪ ♪ This is something you should already know ♪ ♪ I said it already before, and I'm a winner ♪ ♪ No matter what you say or do ♪ ♪ I will always win not lose ♪ ♪ I don't think you're hearing me ♪ ♪ I'm a winner ♪ ♪ I'm here, don't forget I'm a winner ♪ ♪ I'm a winner because it's built in my DNA ♪ ♪ The truth is going to be exposed like TNA ♪ ♪ Celebrating victory I'm pouring E&J ♪ ♪ Out to get this bread PB&J ♪ ♪ Got the medal pack trophies, but I can't relax ♪ ♪ No photofinish ♪ ♪ I'm alone with the camera flash ♪♪ -All right, athletes.

We're ready for you.

Come on down here to the Plaza.

We'd love to play you.

Raiders, Golden Knights, Aces, Aviators, we're ready for you.

-That's the show.

Watch more Vegas All In stories and moments whenever you want to.

Go online and search @vegasallinpbs, and we'll see you there.

-I'm all in.

-You know, we're talking about Las Vegas.

So, yeah, yeah, I'm all in.