(NEXSTAR) — The American women’s pursuit team took gold at the Olympic velodrome when road race champion Kristen Faulkner, time trial bronze medalist Chloe Dygert, Jennifer Valente and Lilly Williams won the competition.
This is Falkner’s second gold of the Games. On Sunday, Faulkner won the road cycling race through Paris, becoming the first American to win a road race medal in 40 years.
What’s wild: she didn’t even qualify for the Paris Olympics. She was tapped by coaches to fill in for someone else.
“They’re quite heavy to wear around,” Faulkner said while giggling about her two gold medals.
With Faulkner’s help, the team soared to a big early lead on New Zealand in their head-to-head showdown, then held on through a ragged finish to finally win the gold medal.
The Americans led by more than a second a quarter of the way through the 4,000-meter race, and they stretched the gap at one point to nearly two seconds. When they began to come apart from their single-file, aerodynamic draft with about two laps to go, they had to fight to the finish to hold off Ally Wollaston, Bryony Botha, Emily Shearman and Nicole Shields.
In the final of the men’s pursuit, Sam Welsford, Oliver Bleddyn, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien of Australia beat Britain in a close final at the Vélodrome National de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines to win gold for the first time in two decades.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
