Charleston’s Road Race Winner Takes Top Honors
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Kristen Faulkner, the winner of Charleston’s 2024 Elite/U23 Road Race, now is an Olympic Champion. Faulkner, who raced in May’s USA Cycling Professional Road National Championships in Charleston, won the gold medal in Paris Sunday.
In Paris, Faulkner competed against 92 athletes from across the globe in the 158-kilometer women’s road race. After a hard-fought battle, Faulkner soloed to the finish, gaining 58 seconds on her competitors when she crossed the line. Although Faulkner’s specialty is track cycling, she competed and won the Olympic road race after teammate (and Charleston’s Time Trial Winner) Taylor Knibb dropped out to focus on another event. This is the first Team USA Road Race Medal in 40 years. The first women’s road race was in 1984, where the Americans won gold and silver with Connie Carpenter-Phinney and Rebecca Twigg.
Faulkner is from the small fishing village of Homer, Alaska, where her parents still reside. She graduated from Harvard in 2016 and was a varsity rower for two years in college. Faulkner currently holds Harvard’s record for the fastest 2k erg time for lightweight women. In 2016, Faulkner started cycling and fell in love with the sport. By mid-2018, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and in 2020, began racing for Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank.
The USA Cycling Professional Road National Champions will return to Charleston May 20-25, 2025. The 2024 USA Cycling Pro Road Championships generated an estimated $4.6 million economic impact during its inaugural event May 14-19.
For more information about the USA Cycling Pro Road Championships, visit charlestonwv.com.