Olympic Cycling Fever: Part 1
Did you catch Anna Kiesenhoffer’s Olympic performance over the weekend? It was one of our favorite #Tokyo2020 moments thus far. She’s a very serious amateur cyclist with a day job as a math professor.
“On paper I’m an amateur, but cycling takes up a lot of space in my life.” Might be time to quit your day job…
What happened? The favorites in the race got very confused.
Anna was in a three-person break up the road. That break got a ten-minute lead and then Anna attacked her two companions.
Behind them, the favorites for the race ramped up the pace and caught the first two riders in the break.
But they didn’t realize Anna was two minutes further up the road and so they didn’t chase her down. Super hard to imagine how that happened… You’ve got to know how many people are in the break, right? There’s only 3!?!
So literally, the silver medalist crossed the line celebrating as if she’d won gold 🥈 Whoops.
“I’m not the kind of cyclist who is only pushing the pedals; I’m also the mastermind behind my performance.”
Kiesenhofer is a career time trialist – and didn’t have a WorldTour team or any teammates in the race. She was a total outsider in the event, but a perfect storm of questionable tactics from the major nations – especially the Netherlands – her incredible legs & a ’UGE error made by the chase bought her a gold medal in dramatic style!
