Kristen Faulkner went against the USA Cycling to win the Olympic race in Paris: "They said I had a 6% chance for a medal"
CyclingTuesday, 24 December 2024 at 03:00
American Kristen Faulkner won two of the biggest victories of her career at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Taking advantage of the off-season, the 32-year-old cyclist wanted to remember those who did not bet on her even in her own country.
Faulkner won Olympic gold in both the team pursuit and the elite women's road race. The latter was the bigger of the two, and at the same time the one they were least confident she could win.
"At first, USA Cycling didn't support me in the road race, even after I qualified, because they were worried about the team pursuit," Faulkner said in an interview with the Velo.
The American relates that before competing for the medals she was asked not to ride the road race: "They took me into a room and said, 'We don't want you to do the road race.' I told them: 'Well, I think I can win a medal.' And they said, 'Well, we've done a drill, and our drill shows that you have a 6 percent chance of winning a medal of any color.'"
Faulkner's strategy
In order to convince her superiors to compete in the Olympic road race, Kristen Faulkner said she defended herself by claiming that the course suited her perfectly for a number of reasons. She was right.
"They asked me: 'well, how are you going to win?' I said: 'I'm going to attack from a small select group on the home straight leading into the finish.' And so, actually, the exact strategy I had when I told them that was exactly what happened in the race," the American concluded.
Faulkner took the gold medal crossing the finish line alone, after a 3-kilometer solo. She finished 58 seconds ahead of Marianne Vos, who took silver in a reduced sprint where Lotte Kopecky took bronze.
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It's not like they wanted her to not win😅 She had an outstanding Olympics. But there's a reason why she wasn't expected to win the road race and that's ok. Things like this happen and it's great...better than seeing expected winners win.
It shouldn’t be about expectations in the first place should it? Besides, if you look at everyone’s calculations as a whole they don’t add up in the first place. There’ll be 2-3 riders with a 50% chance, a dozen with 10 or 20% and dozens more with a 5% so we’re expecting at least 2 if not 3 winners.
Remind me again who won before her? Says it all about using data to decide on participation.
USA Cycling couldn't have predicted what would happen with the star-studded Dutch team...
No but they spent a fortune on a cookie to predict the unpredictable. So much for tech and data and experts. Always useful in the service of opaque agendas.
If the race were held 20x, and wouldn't win 20x. That 6% may very well have been accurate. You do realize that the odds against anyone winning even a pick 3 lottery is very low. But someone does come out winning😅
USA Cycling is just such a good institution!
...And they wonder why I don't do their races anymore!
The UCI is worse than USA Cycling
Not sure that can be true, in that USA Cycling is part of the UCI.