Sweden’s Jenny Rissveds was all smiles as she accepted her bronze medal and hugged an emotional Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (France) on the rostrum of the ladies’s cross-country mountain bike race on the 2024 Paris Olympics. Rissveds had come full circle after some troublesome years following her gold medal journey on the 2016 Rio Olympic Video games.
Rissveds was simply 22 years outdated when she claimed the Olympic gold medal. Not having the instruments to deal with the stress, each inner and exterior that adopted that historic victory, she struggled with melancholy and an consuming dysfunction and inside a yr of profitable the Olympic title, left the game. She took a two-year hiatus to hunt therapy and easily journey her bike for enjoyable earlier than returning in 2019.
Since her return to racing in 2019, she has received seven World Cups and positioned 14th within the cross-country occasion on the Tokyo Olympics.
Now 30 years outdated, Rissveds proudly stood smiling on the rostrum.
“Now I really feel relieved. It feels so nice to come back full circle after the gold in Rio and what occurred in between. It feels so rattling good to have the ability to set such a very good race. I’ll positively take pleasure in and really feel the delight of this race,” Rissveds instructed Eurosport.
“It feels very massive and I’m so very blissful and proud, above all.”
The battle was heated within the girls’s race for the silver and bronze medals after France’s Ferrand-Prévot left everybody behind on the second lap and delivered a solo victory. By the third lap, Rissveds, Laura Stigger (Austria) and Haley Batten (United States) had been chasing collectively in what appeared to be a battle for bronze till simply forward Puck Pieterse (Netherlands) punctured and fell out of competition for silver.
“For me, it wasn’t that dramatic, however there was a lot happening round me on a regular basis. It is so ‘overcharged’ at an Olympics,” Rissveds added. “I simply thought of doing my half and driving with what I had for the day. I had a number of confidence and calm in me.”
Strongest on the climb firstly of lap 6, Rissveds and Batten had been duelling for the silver with a surging Pieterse behind them. The American was in a position to acquire just a few seconds on an uphill part on the ultimate lap the place she held the hole by means of the feed zone, which she went by means of however didn’t take a bottle.
Rissveds crossed the road six seconds after Batten and rapidly congratulated the 2 riders that completed forward of her.
A distraught Pieterse, who completed fourth, lodged a protest on Batten for not taking a bottle within the feed zone however Rissveds dismissed the incident.
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