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I love a good underdog story. I also love a good cycling race. When the two combine, I’m excited and energized for days—my mind turning over seemingly endless possibilities that were previously difficult to imagine.
Kristen Faulkner’s upset win at the Womens’ Olympic Cycling Road Race is an inspiring yet humble lesson in life as well as sport.
Kristen was not favored to win—she was not even slated to compete until a few weeks before the race, when original qualifier, Taylor Knibb, dropped out to focus on triathlon. Kristen took over Knibbs’s place, yet was not planning to excel at the road race, or even necessarily work hard. The road race, after all, was not Faulkner’s specialty, or even her “A” race for the Olympics—her original Olympic qualifier was in team track cycling, a completely different kind of event. What’s more, the U.S. women had not won an Olympic road race in 40 years, not since Connie Carpenter-Phinney won gold in Los Angeles in 1984. No American female had won gold before, or since.
Given these conditions, no one was watching Faulkner very closely during the road race; expectations for U.S. performance were modest. Yet somehow, with that small change in the U.S. roster just a few weeks before the start of the Olympics, the fates aligned, and the glimmer of some new possibility emerged.
Here are a few of the lessons I’ve gleaned from Kristen’s incredible and inspiring performance on the roads in and around Paris:
1. Continue to try new things, regardless of age, education, or ability.
Kristen, incredibly, is a newbie to cycling. She’d been a rower in college and did not even try cycling until 2017, just a year out of college and seven short years ago. Seven years! To go from complete novice to Olympic gold medalist!
This is incredibly inspiring to me because it’s a gigantic reminder that we all have untapped talents. Who knows what we are capable of until we try? I could try something new tomorrow and discover I have a facility for it, even a talent—unlocking new experiences and joys that are difficult to imagine or anticipate today. It makes me want to get out there and try everything I can. Who truly knows what I’m capable of? I find this unbelievably exciting and inspiring.
2. Don’t be intimidated by age, fame, or experience.
Faulkner competed against and beat some of the biggest names in road cycling, including Lotte Kopecky of Belgium and Marianne Vos of The Netherlands, two of the most veteran, decorated cyclists from the European circuit and the Tour de France Femmes. Clearly, facing off against some of the titans of the sport did not faze Faulkner; she competed with focus and clarity and did not allow doubt about her abilities or experience to affect her race mindset.
This is indeed the mindset of a champion. When we allow room for comparison and judgment of ourselves against others, we allow room for self-doubt. And self-doubt does not fuel performance, either in racing or in life.
3. Know your strengths, and work them
Cyclists all have different body types, and tend to be strong in certain areas and less strong in others. Some, like Mark Cavendish,Kopecky, and Vos, are sprinters. Others are climbers, or domestiques (cyclists who produce consistently strong power to help pull their team, and sprinter, to the end of the course with the freshest legs possible in an effort to provide an opportunity for those fresh legs to win the race). Most road races are won by a sprint finish, so sprinters like Cavendish, Kopecky, and Vos tend to win races on the final sprint and, in turn, receive all the attention, accolades and acclaim.
Faulkner, with her background of track cycling, is not a sprinter. Her strength lies in steady consistent power over long periods, so she is not able to compete as well in those short final sprints at which Kopecky and Vos excel.
Faulkner knew this well. She brilliantly used this knowledge to craft a strategy to take advantage of her strengths: she created a perfect race of attrition at the perfect moment. She saw that Kopecky and Vos, some of the favorites to win the race, had used a great deal of energy trying to rejoin the peloton after being caught up and behind a crash earlier in the race. Faulkner knew that Kopecky and Vos, as sprinters, would not be able to sustain the same long-term power output that she could, especially given their efforts to catch back up to the peloton. So, Faulkner decided to put the pressure on them by turning on her sustained power at exactly the right moment, forcing Kopecky and Vos to expend energy at the end of the race just to hang on and not get dropped.
It worked. Eventually Kopecky and Vos could no longer hang on, not if they wanted to have energy left for a finishing sprint. I watched in amazement as Kopecky and Vos let Faulkner go and backed off the pace, discussing something amongst themselves. Kopecky and Vos (along with Blanka Vas of Hungary) then rode moderately, in discussion with each other until the end, when they unleashed their finishing sprints.
Faulkner’s gold was uncontested, her strategy brilliant, while the decorated veterans battled it out for silver and bronze. You couldn’t have dreamed it up any better!
Thank you, Kristen Faulkner, for such a smart and strategic race, demonstrating all of those qualities that help us not only race to our potential, but live to our potential as well.
No wonder our culture is so in love with sports—sports are a mirror that helps us understand ourselves better, shows us how to dig deep and work to overcome difficult situations, and reminds us how we can always give our best, even when the stakes seem insurmountably high. We all experience challenge and adversity, and can all relate to the athlete’s struggle. Sports so frequently remind us of that sublime feeling of giving our best and executing a job well done, regardless of outcome. They also provide joy in those delicious underdog stories. I welcome and adore that feeling that anything is possible—the world opens up at our feet, and all we need to do is hang in there long enough to discover it.
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