Alaska’s Kristen Faulkner wins another gold medal at Olympics

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Homer cyclist Kristen Faulkner on Wednesday morning added another gold medal to her impressive Olympic Games debut.

Just three days after a stunning gold medal performance in road cycling at the Paris Olympics, Faulkner was one of four cyclists leading Team USA in defeat of New Zealand in the Team Pursuit finals with a time of 4 minutes, 4.306 seconds in the 4-kilometer race.

New Zealand turned in a time of 4:04.927.

The U.S. women’s result was the program’s first gold-ever medal in this track cycling discipline. Faulkner’s teammates — Jennifer Valente (San Diego, California), Chloé Dygert (Brownsburg, Indiana), and Lily Williams (Tallahassee, Florida) — were all past bronze medalists.

Faulkner, a professional road cyclist, was originally named to USA Cycling’s Track Pursuit Team ahead of the road team despite having just competed in her first track race in early 2024. But the Homer native said that track — not the road — was her primary focus heading into the Paris Olympics.

“My teammates have put a lot into me for track this year and I really wanted to show up and give them my best,” Faulkner said after winning gold on Sunday. “So it was a really tough decision to do the road race. And I said I would only do it if I felt like I had a chance at a medal. And if any point I got out of medal contention, I would drop the race and just call it a day.”

After pushing through for gold in the 98-mile race, Faulkner proved she had plenty left in the tank for Wednesday’s team race.

Starting on opposite sides of a 250-meter velodrome, the U.S. and New Zealand were timed according to when their respective third-place rider covered all 16 laps.

After taking the early lead, Faulkner and teammates traded off manning the lead position. The Alaskan (bib 246) took two turns leading the pack, including once after the pacesetter Valente dropped out (only three of four team members must finish).

In an interview before the Olympics, Faulkner admitted she knew little of the ins and outs of team pursuit.

“The trajectory has been really fast and the learning curve has been really steep,” she said, “and so to go from kind of a beginner level almost a year ago to making the Olympic team is really special and sometimes it feels unbelievable.”

“They’re very different events,” Faulkner said of road and track cycling. “Even though they’re [both] on two wheels — that’s really where the similarities end.”

Whereas a road bike features gears, breaks and the race lasts four hours, a track bike has no gears or breaks and lasts just four minutes with athletes traveling in an aerodynamic position.

In Wednesday’s race, the Americans and New Zealanders each averaged 36 mph on the bike, much quicker than the style Faulkner was used to riding in Homer.

After learning how to balance on two wheels in the small fishing town “at the end of the road,” Faulkner attended boarding school on the East Coast before enrolling in Harvard University where she was a Division I rower.

Continuing through life as a venture capitalist, Faulkner took a cycling class in Central Park in New York and fell back in love with being on a bike.

“I used to bike around Alaska for fun as a kid, bike around Homer when I was a kid, and that’s really where I learned to love biking,” she recalled. “But it wasn’t until after college when I moved to New York City that I started racing competitively.

“And then in 2021, I decided that if I didn’t pursue my Olympic dream at that point, I might never do it. So, in 2021 I left my job and I became a full-time cyclist, moved to Europe and just went all in on being a professional cyclist and pursuing the Olympic dream.”

It’s no longer a dream for the now two-time Olympic gold medalist.

Faulkner’s sudden ascent in cycling is one to behold; from Alaska to Harvard, from finance professional to Olympic gold medalist.

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