With just one race day in her legs so far this season, Kristen Faulkner (EF Education-Oatly) isn't dejected with the delayed start to the year, or fretting about a game plan to win Liége-Bastogne-Liége, or even looking too far ahead to score a fourth Grand Tour stage win. She said she may be medically healed from an off-season concussion, and now amps up her efforts for "real fitness".
Faulkner's staggering successes in 2024 have raised the bar, and she is now her own toughest act to follow. She won a stage at the Vuelta España and then the elite women's road race title at US Pro Road Nationals. Having qualified for the Olympic Games on the track to compete in Team Pursuit, she was a late fill-in for the road race in Paris, then came away with a gold medal in each event.
"I'm definitely not 100% yet," she admitted to Cyclingnews shortly after her outing as a support rider at the revived women's Milan-San Remo.
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"Coming into this month [March], I knew that I wouldn't be at full form at Milan-San Remo, and so it was actually nice to have a first race back with no pressure. I could support my teammate [third-placed Noemi Rüegg]. And obviously, that worked out really well for us."
What she hopes will work really well for her next step back into form are two-and-a-half weeks at altitude, a first-time experience for her in an organised environment since turning pro in 2020. From Italy, she traveled to southern Spain, facing not-so-welcoming conditions in the Sierra Nevada now nicknamed 'snow camp', the warm sunshine in the Andalusian valleys giving way to cold, snowy conditions at altitude.
"I've done altitude twice in my life before, and both were on my own. This was my first time doing it with a team, so it's really well structured. There's five of us up here, mostly the Ardennes group and the Vuelta group," Faulkner told Cyclingnews.
"It's crazy. I mean, the wild thing is, it's really nice down in Granada. So you go down, and it's like beach weather, and then you come up here, and you're like full ninja mode, covered, you know, head to toe with gloves, hat. I haven't worn a hat under my helmet since I was riding in Boston this winter. So it's definitely below freezing at the top.
"I'm hoping that this altitude block will give me a bit of a boost. But real fitness takes time, and it requires patience. And right now, I just have to kind of honor my body's timeline and trust the process. I feel lucky that my team's supportive of letting me do that."
After camp, she will focus on the Ardennes Classics and then the Vuelta, where she has one of her Grand Tour victories, with two others at the Giro d'Italia Women. It's a training camp, not a vacation, after all, and her goals are to win stages at Grand Tours, including her first at the Tour de France Femmes.
"[Camp] is really great for several reasons. First, the fitness gains going into the Ardennes and the Vuelta. Second, it's kind of a dress rehearsal for maybe a pre-Tour de France altitude camp. And the third thing, it's a really good chance for us to ride with each other and spend time together before we do a lot of racing together.
"At a normal year, I would love to win Liège. Like I said, I'm not on full form. I think if I was on full form and healthy, I am confident that I could do a very good result.
"I love the really hard one-day races. And so I find that's where I tend to shine. The fatigue is tangible by the end, you know, it's visible. And I love racing in those conditions."
Inspiring young women
The off-season finished with a hectic schedule of media interviews and engagements from her double Olympic golds in Paris. But then she had to take additional time to recover from a concussion suffered in a training ride in December, which set her back even longer. She had time to cook, take walks, have date nights with her boyfriend, and reflect on a big year.
During the winter, Wahoo completed a new 'Embrace Every Moment' video series to promote inspiring stories from the women's peloton and in Feburary the second episode of spotlighted Faulkner and her EF Oatly teammates from the Tour de France Femmes. At that Grand Tour, Faulkner had two top fives and rode in fourth place overall after a strong ride on the Liége stage.
"For Wahoo to take this initiative and to show young girls what they can become one day, I think is game-changing. It's amazing that they're doing that for us, the athletes, but it's even more amazing that they're showing the next generation what they can become one day. It's everything that the sport needs and everything that we are pushing for to grow visibility about female athletes."
She is emphatic about helping to inspire a new generation of female athletes. And not just stage races, with the growing attendance and media interest, but also going back to her roots as a fan of the Olympic Games.
"Young girls need to see female professional athletes on TV. And growing up, I did not have that. The only women I saw on TV were at the Olympics, and that is why the Olympics have been my life goal. It's because when I was young, that was the only thing I knew I could become," Faulkner said.
Her all-time favourite one-day event is now the Olympic Games road race, where she put on a powerful, breakaway demonstration in Paris last summer that carried her along the Siene river grab an unexpected gold medal in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
She has heard a lot of stories about fan reactions, including people yelling at their televisions to cheer her to victory, and hopes to inspire young women with many more wins, including a stage at the Tour de France Femmes.
"Actually, I want to make a montage video of all these clips of people screaming at their TVs during that race. If anyone has any videos of them screaming at their TV, please DM me," she told Cyclingnews with a laugh, but very serious about the open call for fans.
"This montage video, it's something that I really want to make," she added, just one of the many ways she wants to clear a path for young women to follow her treadmarks.
