The ladies’s Olympic street race will happen this weekend, on August 4 at 8 a.m. ET, and 95 ladies will likely be combating for an opportunity at a medal.
For the two American ladies racing, Chloé Dygert and Kristen Faulkner, there’s further motivation on the road realizing that no American girl has medaled in Olympic street racing in 40 years.
A Dynamic Duo Pulling Double Obligation
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
Dygert is not any stranger to rising to the event on the Olympics; she is now a three-time medalist, having earned her third medal – a silver one – in the person time trial just some days in the past.
This will likely be Faulkner’s first Olympics, and after rising to skilled biking prowess on an accelerated timeline after solely studying to trip competitively in 2020, the Alaskan is more likely to be hungry to make a reputation for herself in Paris.
Each Dygert and Faulkner are pulling double responsibility for Crew USA. Along with the street occasion(s), they’re additionally integral components of the Crew Pursuit on the velodrome.
Whereas Crew USA has medaled within the Crew Pursuit previously three Olympics, there’s historical past to be made within the street race. The final time an American girl medaled within the street race was within the very first Olympic street race in 1984, when Connie Carpenter and Rebecca Twigg took gold and silver, respectively.
Connie Carpenter
(Picture credit score: United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum)
Thought-about one of many greats of ladies’s biking, Connie Carpenter-Phinney (sure, that Phinney. She’s married to Davis Phinney and Taylor Phinney is their son) made historical past by being the primary, and thus far solely, American girl to earn a gold medal within the Olympic street race.
The newest race content material, interviews, options, opinions and professional shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
She took the highest spot on the Olympic podium in 1984, which was the debut yr for ladies’s street racing within the Video games.
For Carpenter-Phinney these 1984 weren’t her first Olympics, nevertheless. She started her sporting profession as a long-distance velocity skater and competed within the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics when she was 14 years previous. She positioned seventh within the 1,500-meter velocity skating occasion.
After a velocity skating-induced ankle damage sidelined her in 1976, Carpenter-Phinney picked up biking to cross-train and rapidly turned a dual-elite athlete.
She discovered a second love in biking and commenced competing in bike races within the late Nineteen Seventies, profitable 12 whole U.S. nationwide titles in street and observe biking earlier than being chosen for Crew USA for the inaugural ladies’s Olympic street race. The race consisted of a 79.2-kilometre route by way of Los Angeles, the place she edged out her teammate Rebecca Twigg, profitable gold by simply half a wheel size on the end line.
Carpenter-Phinney can be a seasoned rower who helped the UC Berkeley ladies’s crew group win the 1980 nationwide championship for ladies’s coxless fours.
Since her unbelievable achievement on the 1984 Video games, Carpenter-Phinney has been inducted into the U.S. Bicycling Corridor of Fame, married, and raised two athletically proficient kids: Kelsey Phinney, a Nordic ski racer, and Taylor Phinney, a now-retired former skilled bike owner and Olympian.
Rebecca Twigg
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
Rebecca Twigg, now in her early 60s, has had almost the polar reverse expertise post-Olympic medal as Carpenter-Phinney.
Twigg found biking at a younger age and, like Carpenter-Phinney, took to it with ease and pleasure, saying that the one time she fell was when she realized on a trip as a baby that she didn’t know easy methods to cease and barreled right into a wall.
She was scouted at age 17 by well-known biking coach Eddie Borysewicz who helped her kick off her biking profession first in street racing, after which in observe, particularly, the person pursuit. At her peak, Twigg was racing greater than 60 instances per yr.
The Seattle-born bike owner rose to super fame within the Eighties and 90s profitable six biking world championships and two Olympic medals throughout three Video games.
Twigg’s first Olympics began with a bang: she represented the U.S. within the ladies’s street race, the place she earned a silver medal subsequent to Carpenter-Phinney’s gold one.
She then returned to the Video games on the 1992 Barcelona Olympics the place she earned a bronze medal within the 3,000-meter particular person pursuit. Her remaining Olympics look was on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics the place she positioned fifth in the identical occasion.
Regardless of her super success in biking, Twigg has struggled in her post-Olympic days and as of 2019 thought-about herself homeless, in response to the Seattle Occasions.
Twigg shared within the Seattle Occasions article that making an attempt to work a extra conventional job after the fun of her biking profession didn’t resonate along with her and he or she by no means discovered a “good match” after being so in love along with her earlier job {of professional} biking.
Twigg mentioned she vacillates between dwelling with family and friends, in homeless shelters and even underneath rubbish baggage on the road downtown. It has been years since she rode a motorbike.
Twigg is just not hooked on medication or alcohol, however described herself as “confused” with what to do along with her life.
“A few of the arduous days are actually painful once you’re coaching for racing,” Twigg mentioned within the Seattle Occasions article, “however being homeless, when you’ve got little hope or information of the place the end line goes to be, is simply as arduous.”
As Dygert and Faulkner equipment up for the ladies’s street race on August 4, they are going to undoubtedly be gunning to interrupt the 40 yr drought of U.S.-earned medals within the ladies’s street race, realizing that they’ve some very massive and really significant sneakers to fill.
