PARIS – When Chloe Dygert crossed the finish line in the women’s road race Sunday, she saw her teammate Kristen Faulkner’s name atop the leaderboard and Faulkner standing in the Trocadéro holding an American flag loosely by her waist.

“She doesn’t know how to hold the flag, so she’s going to have to get used to that now,” Dygert said. “She’s probably going to be holding it a lot in the near future.”

Faulkner’s naivety is understandable.

On Sunday, she competed in her first Olympics, in a sport she began doing competitively only seven years ago, and she carved her name into American cycling history by winning a gold medal in breakaway fashion.

Faulkner pulled away from a pack of three racers with about 3 kilometers to go and beat the Netherlands’ Marianne Vos and Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky by 59 seconds. She is the first American woman to medal in the race since 1984, when Connie Carpenter and Rebecca Twigg finished 1-2 at the L.A. Olympics.

“I think even though I came here with the confidence that I could earn a medal, when I crossed the line, yeah, I knew it had happened but I didn’t fully take it in and so it was just pretty overwhelming for me,” Faulkner said. “I think I had a lot of emotions around – I came in here with a lot of confidence today that I could do well but not everyone had confidence in me and so I think when I crossed the line it was like, ‘Wow, I made it happen even when a lot of people didn’t believe I could.’”

Faulkner, 31, is a relative newbie to cycling, but no stranger to competitive athletics.

She grew up in a fishing village in Homer, Alaska, rowed collegiately at Harvard and entered the business world in finance and venture capital before she quit to pursue cycling in 2020.

Faulkner said the discipline she learned as a rower and athletic engine she built in college have served her well as a cyclist, and she said she developed an appetite for risk – and the ability to calculate which risks are worth taking – that were on display in the narrow Paris streets Sunday.

“I was a venture capitalist. I was working in finance, we were investing in early-stage technology companies and they were quite high risk,” Faulkner said. “And so a lot of what I learned how to do is how to take calculated risks and how to assess risk. And if there's a high risk but the reward is high, then it might be worth it. And I think in a race, I take that mindset with me throughout the race. It's like, ‘Well, there's a break up the road, there's a risk, and why not catch it?’ What is the risk reward ratio of being patient versus being aggressive? So that's something I definitely take with me.”

Faulkner was a late add to the women’s road race after failing to qualify for one of the USA’s two spots at the Olympic trials. Taylor Knibb, who won a spot at trials – the top two finishers in time trials received spots in the road race – gave that up to focus on other events at the Olympics.

Faulkner said she considered not racing Sunday to focus on team pursuit, an event the Americans are favored to win a medal in that begins Tuesday. She decided to stay in only after simulating both races and the break in between during training and feeling good about her chances both to medal Sunday and perform at a high level in team pursuit.

“I made an agreement with my track coaches that I would only do the road race if I felt that I was medal capable and if any point if I got dropped from the front group and I was no longer in contention for a medal I would just pull out of the race and recover for team pursuit,” Faulkner said.

By the midpoint of the race, it was clear Faulkner would be in medal contention.

She spent most of the afternoon in a 12-racer pack ahead of the peloton, and pulled into a two-racer chase group with Kopecky in pursuit of co-leaders Vos and Bianka Vas with about 9 kilometers to go.

Faulkner and Kopecky pulled even with Vos and Vas with just over 3 kllometers left, and Faulkner hit the gas and gunned it for the finish line.

“I felt quite confident that as soon as we caught them, if I could get a small gap, it would probably be unlikely that they would cooperate and work together until the line to catch me,” Faulkner said. “And I also knew that my time-trialing capabilities are quite strong and that I could be strong when I was a (going) solo. So yes, when I was chasing with Kopecky, the first thing on my mind was as soon as we catch them, I have to go and head down until the finish.”

Dygert, who finished 15th, 3 minutes and 40 seconds off the lead, said seeing Faulkner’s name across the leaderboard when she crossed the line made the crash she endured Sunday well worth it.

“Faulkner had an amazing ride,” Dygert said. “She’s been having a great year this year. Super impressive. She’s just shown over and over again that she has that power for those finals, so really impressive and she’s put a lot of work in and she’s doing a lot of track and I think that is really helped her and yeah, I’m super happy for her. This is huge. And her first Olympics, what a way to leave it with a gold medal.”

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

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kristen Faulkner takes big risk for gold in Olympic road race