The Eiffel Tower in the back, the finish line in front, Kristen Faulkner seemed unaware she was on her way to win the Olympic road race.
The 31-year-old had shaken free from a group of leaders with just 3 kilometers to go on the 158-kilometer course, and went into tunnel vision mode quickly. She looked back once, saw she had opened up a gap, and powered away toward the line.
When she crossed it, there was no celebration. So, did she even knew she had won? Yes, but the emotional impact of the moment was simply too overwhelming.
“I was pretty sure I won. But to be honest, I was like, ‘What in the world just happened?’ I couldn’t process it,” Faulkner told Eurosport after her victory. “It was too big to really realize it happened, so it took me a few minutes and I had to double-check, triple-check. ‘Did I just win gold? Did I just win gold?’ I knew it, but I didn’t know it.”
The United States’ first Olympic road race champion in 40 years — when Connie Carpenter took to the top spot on the podium in the discipline’s debut — Faulkner did not start the day as one of the clear pre-race favorites. Despite some solid results this season, she was merely a dark-horse to win the medal.
Faulkner, however, entered the race with a different mindset. It was either go big, or not go at all.
“I knew it was going to be a really tough race. But I knew that if I was racing, I was racing to win,” she said. “I wasn’t racing to participate. So, I really had to come in with that ambition and if I wasn’t trying the medal then I wasn’t going to race.”
Also set to participate in the team pursuit on the track, Faulkner originally was not on the start list for the Olympic road race. National time trial champion Taylor Knibb was picked to fill one of only two available slots; Chloe Dygert, who had won bronze in the Olympic time trial, was the other starter. Knibb decided to drop out, however, opening the door for the champion-to-be.
Dygert, meanwhile, played a role in setting Faulkner up for victory: she was involved in a crash with under 50 kilometers to go that tore the peloton apart and created chaos that reverberated through the race. Faulkner came away unscathed from her teammate’s fall, and eventually found herself in a potent group behind race leaders Marianne Vos (NED) and Blanka Vas (HUN).
With 10 kilometers to go, Faulkner and reigning world champion Lotte Kopecky initiated a move up the Montmartre hill to try to bridge a 30-second gap to Vos and Vas. It took them 7 kilometers to get there, but they did.
The quartet up front did not ride together long, though. Faulkner threw down a haymaker almost immediately after the two groups connected, forcing Vas to chase her down. When the Hungarian pulled off in an attempt to get the more experienced Vos and Kopecky to contribute, the race was effectively over: the three started neutralizing one another, while Faulkner rode off into the sunset.
“If we caught them, I had to attack because I couldn’t beat any of them on the line,” Faulkner later said about the race-winning move. “I knew that the best place to attack would be right after we caught them and when everyone was a bit tired. That was my chance. I practiced my late attack several times this year, so I felt pretty comfortable in how to do it. I practiced it a lot. I just hoped it would work.”
Work, it did. And judging by her reaction afterwards, she did not just stun her competition with the blistering attack — she also stunned herself.