TEAM USA star Kristen Faulkner is a Harvard graduate, collegiate rower, venture capitalist – and now an Olympic cyclist.
The multi-talented Faulkner quit her high-flying career in finance in 2021 to pursue her Olympic dreams.
Team USA cycling star Kristen FaulknerCredit: GettyFaulkner is part of the track cycling team for the Paris OlympicsCredit: GettyThe 31-year-old’s speciality is road cyclingCredit: GettyShe turned professional in 2021 after taking up the sport five years earlierCredit: Getty
Now the 31-year-old has been named part of the Team USA track cycling team for the Paris Games this summer.
It has been an incredible rise for the Alaskan, who only rode bikes for fun until 2016.
Faulkner dreamed of competing in the Olympics while watching the 2000 Games in Sydney aged eight.
“I was watching the Sydney Olympics on TV and I thought it was an amazing thing to see. At that moment it became my life goal to go to the Olympics,” Faulkner told Global Cycling Network.
“I remember the opening ceremony, and I was really young but it was one of the most impressionable moments of my life.
“For the next 22 years, it continued to be my life goal. I think it was before an age when I knew what the Olympics meant to the general public or what cycling thought about it.
“It’s never been about reaching a certain level of credibility in the sport, it’s been about that little girl inside of me and what dreams she had when she was a kid.”
A talented swimmer growing up in Alaska, Faulkner attended high school at the elite Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, whose former students include George HW Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Belichick, and Humphrey Bogart.
She moved into rowing and won a world junior silver medal with the U.S. women’s eight.
Faulkner then continued her rowing career at Harvard, where her parents were both student-athletes.
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After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2016, she moved to New York City to begin a career in finance.
Faulkner attended a women’s cycling clinic that year and immediately fell in love with the sport.
“I borrowed a bike from a guy who was 6’3″ and showed up in ordinary shorts,” she recalled.
Faulkner then took a job as an investment associate at Threshold Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.
And she rapidly rose up the cycling ranks to take part in her first professional race in 2020.
For months, Faulkner tried to juggle both her finance job and her cycling career but it proved extremely challenging.
“My first race in Europe was the [2020] Tour de l’Ardèche in France,” she says.
“That was actually my very first pro race. I would wake up at 6am in the morning, work, race, and then work another six hours at night with Zoom calls and board meetings.”
A year later, Faulkner quit her job in finance and moved to Girona, Spain, northeast of Barcelona, to take up cycling full-time.
In 2021, she won a stage of the Ladies Tour of Norway and the following year she won an individual time trial at the Tour de Suisse Women.
Faulkner used to work as a venture capitalistCredit: GettyBut she gave up her job to chase her Olympic dreamsCredit: GettyFaulkner used to row collegiately at HarvardCredit: Getty
“I realized that the worst-case scenario was actually not being broke and without a job,” she said on the Choose the Hard Way podcast.
“The worst-case scenario was being 80 years old and looking back and being like, wow, I really wish I’d done that.”
Faulkner’s speciality is road racing but she has made the track team for the Paris Olympics.
Now after making the Olympic team, Faulker is now going for gold in Paris.
“I want to win a medal at the Olympics,” she told Olympics.com.
“I want to win a world championship in the time trial. And I would like to win a stage at the Tour de France.
“I have some big goals, don’t I?”
How to watch the Olympics
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The Olympics are headed to Paris in July, but don’t worry if can’t catch a flight to France, we’ve got you covered.
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Publish date : 2024-06-22 07:00:00
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Publish date : 2024-06-22 17:09:24
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