Underdog is an understatement for Kristen Faulkner, the American bicycle owner who didn’t even qualify for the Olympics however is now going house with a gold medal after a surprising race via Paris on Sunday.
It was the final 3 kilometers of the race when Faulkner managed to interrupt free from the pack and surge far forward in a spectacular show of vigor. She crossed the end line 58 seconds earlier than the silver and bronze winners ended their races.
She is the primary American lady to win gold within the ladies’s street race since 1984.
Whereas Faulkner’s push was unimaginable by itself, it’s the story she carried along with her that made the win so thrilling.
Faulkner, 31, was not imagined to compete on the 2024 Paris Video games however was known as as much as Crew USA in early July after Taylor Knibb resigned her spot. It was an thrilling second for the girl who had solely begun biking in 2017 on interest rides via Central Park in New York Metropolis.
She grew up mountain climbing and rowing in Homer, Alaska, and ultimately joined the ladies’s crew workforce at Harvard College. It wasn’t till she moved to New York to work as a enterprise capitalist that she tried biking.
“I nonetheless wanted that open air repair that was such an enormous a part of my life,” she advised NBC Information in an interview that aired the evening earlier than her race.
Faulkner didn’t even know the way to lock her cleats into the pedals at first. She ultimately realized her failure to clip in was a results of incompatible gear.
However as soon as she figured it out, Faulkner stated she regularly turned to her bike as an outlet. She ultimately stop her full-time job to race professionally after profitable her first professional race in 2020.
She described her journey to the Olympics as one in every of resilience, overcoming harm and accidents to get to the world’s prime race.
“It’s by no means a matter of if I’ll maintain going, it’s only a matter of how,” Faulkner stated.
Although spectators is perhaps shocked that she walked away with a medal on Sunday, Faulkner knew she had it in her. She advised Olympics.com that she wished to earn a spot on that podium earlier than she even made the workforce.
“I wish to win a medal on the Olympics,” she stated. “I wish to win a world championship within the time trial. And I wish to win a stage on the Tour de France. I’ve some massive objectives, don’t I?”