The ladies’s Olympic street race will happen this weekend, on August 4 at 8 a.m. ET, and 95 girls might be combating for an opportunity at a medal.
For the two American girls racing, Chloé Dygert and Kristen Faulkner, there may be additional motivation on the road realizing that no American lady has medaled in Olympic street racing in 40 years.
A Dynamic Duo Pulling Double Responsibility
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
Dygert isn’t 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 only a few days in the past.
This might be Faulkner’s first Olympics, and after rising to skilled biking prowess on an accelerated timeline after solely studying to experience competitively in 2020, the Alaskan is prone 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 elements of the Crew Pursuit on the velodrome.
Whereas Crew USA has medaled within the Crew Pursuit prior to now three Olympics, there’s historical past to be made within the street race. The final time an American lady 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 of 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 to this point solely, American lady to earn a gold medal within the Olympic street race.
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She took the highest spot on the Olympic podium in 1984, which was the debut 12 months 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 harm sidelined her in 1976, Carpenter-Phinney picked up biking to cross-train and shortly grew to become a dual-elite athlete.
She discovered a second love in biking and started competing in bike races within the late Nineteen Seventies, successful 12 whole U.S. nationwide titles in street and observe biking earlier than being chosen for Crew USA for the inaugural girls’s Olympic street race. The race consisted of a 79.2-kilometre route by means of Los Angeles, the place she edged out her teammate Rebecca Twigg, successful gold by simply half a wheel size on the end line.
Carpenter-Phinney can also be a seasoned rower who helped the UC Berkeley girls’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 gifted 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 experience as a toddler that she didn’t know how you can 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 12 months.
The Seattle-born bike owner rose to large fame within the Nineteen Eighties and 90s successful 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 girls’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 ultimate Olympics look was on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics the place she positioned fifth in the identical occasion.
Regardless of her large success in biking, Twigg has struggled in her post-Olympic days and as of 2019 thought of herself homeless, in keeping with the Seattle Instances.
Twigg shared within the Seattle Instances article that making an attempt to work a extra conventional job after the joys of her biking profession didn’t resonate together with her and he or she by no means discovered a “good match” after being so in love together with her earlier job {of professional} biking.
Twigg mentioned she vacillates between dwelling with family and friends, in homeless shelters and even beneath 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 together with her life.
“A number of the arduous days are actually painful once you’re coaching for racing,” Twigg mentioned within the Seattle Instances article, “however being homeless, when you have got little hope or information of the place the end line goes to be, is simply as arduous.”
As Dygert and Faulkner package up for the ladies’s street race on August 4, they may undoubtedly be gunning to interrupt the 40 12 months drought of U.S.-earned medals within the girls’s street race, realizing that they’ve some very huge and really significant footwear to fill.
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