Johnathan Walker:Kristen Faulkner leads U.S. women team pursuit in quest for gold medal

SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES,Johnathan Walker France — Kristen Faulkner's parents had never seen her race in a velodrome before Tuesday. At France's National Velodrome, they saw cycling's newest sensation qualify for the chance to win another gold medal at the Olympics.

Faulkner and teammates Jennifer Valente, Lily Williams and Chloe Dygert posted the second-fastest time in qualifying for women's team pursuit in 4:05.238.

New Zealand had the fastest qualifying time (4:04.679), and Great Britain (4:06.710) and Italy (4:07.579) rounded out the top four.

The U.S. and Great Britain, the world's most-decorated programs in the event, will race in Friday's first round. Of the eight fastest qualifiers, the teams that post the two best times in Round 1 will meet for the gold medal.

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Both the U.S. and Great Britain have medaled in the event every year since it became an Olympic sport in 2012, though the U.S. will be looking for its first gold.

None of the Team USA racers stopped to talk to reporters as they made their way through the mixed zone following Tuesday's race, but Faulkner's parents told USA Today before the race even they've been amazed at their daughter's meteoric rise.

"Her time in cycling's been a whirlwind," Sara Faulkner said.

According to her website, Faulkner picked up cycling in 2017 after attending a free introductory clinic for women while working in venture capital in New York.

She moved to San Francisco a year later, quit her job in 2020 to pursue cycling full-time and on Sunday became the first American woman to win a gold medal in road race in 40 years.

Sara Faulkner said Kristen's decision to leave her career for cycling "was a long conversation" that happened "over a period of time, actually," and it was her father, Jon, and brother, William, who pushed her to go for it.

"It was her brother who kind of just said, 'Kristen, if cycling's a passion, you need to go do it now. Don't wait cause this is your chance,'" Sara said. "He was really good."

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The Faulkners own a hotel and restaurant in the fishing village of Homer, Ala., and Sara said Jon's entrepreneurial spirit gave rise to his daughter's willingness to start anew at 27 years old.

"I think I've been a risk-taker most of my life, so I was fully supportive of her making the jump and fully confident in her judgment," Jon Faulkner said. "And the fallback position was not – the downside to it wasn't there. She's got a lot on the ball and she's got a great education and she's got - so to me it was, she was born to do this and as her father, I wanted to see her fulfill that dream and her gift in life. And then there was only one trajectory from that point in her life forward and it didn't involve private equity and venture capital."

As new as Kristen is to competitive cycling, Jon said she harbored Olympic dreams in swimming as a little girl.

"I think it started with her at probably 7 or 8, 9 years old," he said. "But she's dreamed of this moment her whole life, so it makes it an amazing fulfillment for us to witness. It's not, even beyond just the pride of a father or mother witnessing another individual's dream come true. Doesn't happen every day."

Back home in Alaska, Kristen became an overnight sensation after the road race, when she pulled ahead of three other competitors with about 3 kilometers to go and won comfortably by 58 seconds.

The Faulkners said they had hundreds of congratulatory messages after Kristen's win, with Jon calling it "the biggest news that’s hit Alaska probably in 10 years."

"Homer’s a small town, so it's got a small town vibe and we've lived there – she's lived there her entire life and most of our adult life," he said. "So everybody knows us and we know everybody, but they've had an impact on our life, so you can't really live in a small town and not have direct impacts that are positive. And she's recognized them and we honor that. So they're reaching out to us, I think for a lot of reasons, just mostly to congratulate us and Kristen. But yeah, the town's waiting for a big parade. We're telling them it'll have to be a winter parade because I don't think it's good to have a parade without Kristen there.

"But what the heck? She's the Arctic Fox, right? So we got to have a winter parade."

Contact Dave Birkett atdbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on X and Instagram at @davebirkett.