History Is Made! Kristen Faulkner Wins Olympic Road Race Gold for Team USA (2024)

On Sunday, Kristen Faulkner became the first American to win gold at the Olympic road cycling race since Connie Carpenter and Alexis Grewal won the women’s and men’s races at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, respectively.

In a race that was defined by a day of solo attacks, it was the final attack of the day that gave this year’s Olympic cycling events it’s most unexpected result.

With just over three kilometers of the 158-kilometer course left to race, Faulkner Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky—one of the major pre-race favorites—closed a gap to leaders Marianne Vos of the Netherlands and Hungary’s Blanka Vas.

Faulkner immediately launched the race-winning attack, leaving Kopecky, Vos, and Vas all looking at each other, each waiting for one of the others to make a move. Their indecisiveness allowed Faulkner to solo to victory, crossing the line with a look of disbelief on her face fifty-eight seconds clear of Vos, Kopecky, and Vas.

Finally, the the chasers launched their sprint, with Vos edging out the others and Kopecky rounding out the podium.

“I feel like it’s a dream come true,” Faulkner said after the race. “I took a really big risk a few years ago to come to pursue my dream and I made it happen. It's the best feeling in the world, I don't know how to describe it.”

It was just a few short weeks ago that Faulkner learned she’d be in this race at all. Faulkner was slated to compete in the track competition, however, took teammate Taylor Knibb’s spot in the road race when Knibb decided to drop out of the race and focus on the triathlon.

Unlike many professional cyclists, Faulkner didn’t race her way up through the junior ranks before jumping to the elite level. Rather, the native of Homer, Alaska didn’t start racing until after she finished college in 2016.

After graduating from Harvard, where she rowed competitively, Faulkner moved to New York City for work. It was there that the now thirty-one-year-old started cycling to stay fit, making pre-dawn laps around Central Park’s famous loop.

In a recently aired interview, Faulkner told NBC News’ Stephanie Gosk that she was so green to cycling, that, on an early ride, she didn’t realize her cleats didn’t match her pedals, which is why she couldn’t clip in.

Faulkner started racing—and winning—almost immediately. By 2020, she quit her job at a venture capital firm to start racing professionally for TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank. Two years after that, she was racing for Women’s WorldTour team BikeExchange-Jayco (now called Jayco-AlUla).

It was that year, in 2022, that she made her first big splash on the international race circuit, winning a pair of stages at the Giro d’Italia Donne and a stage at the Tour de Suisse Women. She also enjoyed a pair of major podiums that year, finishing second over overall at the Tour de Suisse and third overall at Itzulia Women.

Earlier this year, after a move to the America-based team EF-Oatly-Cannondale, Faukler won the U.S. National Road Race Championship and finished second in the time trial, leading to her selection for the Olympic team.

However, she entered the race as an outside shot for a medal, as most racers do when they’re lining up against Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky, Netherlands’ Marianne Vos, Italy’s Eliza Longo Borghini, and Poland’s Kasia Niewiadoma, amongst so many other stars of women’s cycling.

For now, Faulkner only gets one day to enjoy her gold-medal performance, as she’s slated to race in the team pursuit event in just two days.