PARIS, France — Roads around Paris have been treacherous for Chloé Dygert.
The 27-year-old Brownsburg rider crashed Sunday in the road race, as she did in the individual time trial a week ago, and finished 15th in the road race at the Olympic Games.
Shockingly, the gold medalist was U.S. teammate Kristen Faulkner, a 31-year-old Alaskan. She was a rower at Harvard who began competitive cycling only seven years ago.
“This is a dream come true. I'm still looking at that finish line sign wondering how my name got there,” Faulkner said.
The United States’ only other medals in the road race were in the inaugural one in 1984, when Connie Carpenter and Rebecca Twigg took gold and silver.
Faulkner’s time over the 158-kilometer course (98 miles) was 3 hours, 59 minutes, 23 seconds.
Marianne Vos, of the Netherlands, took silver and Lotte Kopecky, of Belgium, bronze, both in 4:00:21, or 58 seconds behind.
Kopecky was the reigning world champion and finished fourth at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Dygert went down as riders were beginning the last lap of the finishing circuit, causing several others to go down as well.
There was some question whether she would race at all after falling on a slick surface during the time trial and developing muscle spasms. She recovered to win the bronze medal, finishing one second from silver.
Coming up is track cycling’s team pursuit, in which qualifying is Tuesday and the medals awarded Wednesday.
Dygert’s crash and grisly thigh injury at the 2020 World Championships in Italy still affects her riding. In this season, her training was interrupted first by an Achilles injury and later by a bout of COVID-19.
At Tokyo, she was 31st in the road race and seventh in the individual time trial. She won a bronze medal in team pursuit after a silver at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
The road race started and finished in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on the Pont d’lena that crosses the Seine between the Trocadero Gardens and the Champ de Mars.
From Trocadero, the course was comprised of a 110-kilometer loop in the southwest suburbs before returning to Paris and passing twice on a loop around Montmartre and to the Portes de Pantin and des Lilas at the eastern end of Paris. There was a final passage on the Cote de la Butte Montmarte before descent to the Seine and returning to the Trocadero.
Contact WTHR correspondent David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.