U.S. gold medalist Christine Faulkner poses together with her medal.
Kristen Faulkner, 31, of Homer, Alaska, ended the USA’ 40-year gold medal drought Sunday within the ladies’s biking street race on the Paris Olympics. It was the primary win for the U.S. workforce within the occasion since Connie Carpenter gained the title on the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
For Faulkner, profitable an Olympic gold medal has been fairly a journey. A former rower and hiker who solely took up biking six years in the past, she was searching for one other out of doors problem when she moved to New York to work as a enterprise capitalist.
Faulkner was not scheduled to compete within the 2024 Paris Olympics. Taylor Nibb was known as as much as Crew USA after she determined to give attention to different occasions.
Individuals inform Reuters She needed to win alone to beat the opposite riders as a result of they have been quicker on the end line.
“I assume they will not work nicely collectively as a result of there are 4 of us and solely three medals,” she mentioned.
Faulkner’s profession transition from finance to full-time biking occurred shortly. In 2020, she joined the TIBCO-Silicon Valley Financial institution workforce, which on the time was the oldest skilled ladies’s biking workforce in North America. Again in 2021, she give up her job as a enterprise capitalist, considering it was only a small step in her dedication to sports activities.
She now drives for the Continental ladies’s workforce EF-Oatly-Cannondale. She enjoys the competitors of driving about 50 miles a day, but additionally the friendships and rigorous coaching. Her monetary background additionally helped her reach biking.
“Loads of what I discovered is find out how to take calculated dangers. I carry that mentality with me in competitors,” she mentioned.
