2024 Paris Olympics: Kristen Faulkner stuns in final stretch, upsets field to win road race gold for Team USA

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The gold medals just keep on coming for Team USA. And on Sunday, Olympic cyclist Kristen Faulkner took gold in an event that a U.S. woman hasn’t won in 40 years: road race.

There’s more to this than the U.S winning an event it hasn’t won since 1984. It’s that Faulkner wasn’t projected to win. She wasn’t even supposed to contest the event. She was chosen as the replacement for Taylor Knibb, who gave up the road race to focus on other Olympic cycling events, according to The Athletic.

But it was Faulkner’s wheel that crossed the finish line first, a stunning upset that was made possible by her skill, strength, and perhaps most importantly, fearlessness.

During the race, Faulkner had stayed close to the lead group. After the third and final ascent, Faulkner, who was riding alongside Lotte Kopecky of Belgium, caught up to the lead breakaway group that consisted of Hungary’s Blanka Vas and Marianne Vos of the Netherlands. With three kilometers left, Faulkner didn’t hesitate to make a move. After crossing the Seine, she turned on the jets and zipped away for a stunning show of speed that powered her to victory.

“Zipped away” may be the most accurate way to describe what happened. Kopecky, Vos and Vas were nowhere near Faulkner when she made the final turn. They weren’t even in sight. She crossed the finish completely alone, with no other competitors even close. Vos eventually came in second, with Kopecky third and Vas finishing just off the medal stand in fourth.

Only two members of Team USA come from Alaska, and Faulkner, from the small city of Homer, is one of them. Originally a rower at Harvard, she moved to New York after graduating in 2016 to work in venture capital. She got interested in cycling after spending time riding her bike around Central Park, and in 2017 took an introductory cycling course. She promptly fell in love with the sport and moved to San Francisco in 2018 to pursue it more seriously. She turned pro just two years later, and finally quit her day job in 2021 to focus on cycling full time.

Now, seven years after her first intro course and just four years after becoming a pro cycler, Faulkner has won USA cycling its first women’s road race gold in 40 years.