Last week, after Kristen Faulkner swept past the Eiffel Tower alone to became the first American in 40 years to win gold at the Olympic road race, one of the first text messages she sent out was to Tara Parsons, vice president of rider development at the Century Road Club Association (CRCA) in New York City. On May 18, 2017, a little more than seven years before that momentous win, Faulkner started her long path to Paris at an early morning CRCA clinic for new riders in Central Park. Parsons was the one who taught it.
CRCA was founded all the way back in 1898, and operates to this day as a volunteer-run not-for-profit organization. For $180 per season riders get entry into all 12 races in the club series and access to the club’s free coaching program. But they also get community.
While a rider of Faulkner’s talent and drive might have succeeded no matter what, the support and positive experiences she had from the beginning with CRCA were key to getting her into the sport to begin with. One of Parsons’ main goals is inclusion: getting more people to fall in love with riding, especially if they don’t already have the fancy kit and sparkly bike. And that certainly applied to Faulkner, who showed up to that first clinic in running shorts and sneakers.
From rowing to riding
Faulkner moved to NYC after graduating from Harvard in 2016 with a degree in computer science. She was a Harvard-Radcliffe varsity rower for two years (2015-2016), a far cry from where she grew up in Homer, Alaska. But it wasn’t until she was in New York that she picked up cycling for the first time. It was initially just a hobby, and an outlet from her demanding job in venture capital.
Faulkner had the engine, from rowing crew, but she didn’t have the skills. Enter Parsons and a team of other leaders who ran CRCA’s free introductory women’s clinics in Central Park. “That experience changed my life,” Faulkner told Escape Collective. “Cycling can be a very exclusive sport, but CRCA was so welcoming and supportive. At the clinic, I learned how to clip in, ride around cones, ride in a paceline, and I learned about race tactics.” Faulkner particularly appreciated the volunteer coaches, who “dedicated time from their busy schedules to teach us in the early mornings before work.”
And that became her routine. Riding around Central Park at 5:00AM, practicing skills and speed. Then she started racing in CRCA’s series for novice riders, where she built confidence and honed her race tactics. “CRCA dedicated themselves to new athletes like me who knew very little to nothing about the sport,” said Faulkner. “They never made fun of me for what I wore or how much I had to learn.”
Central Park is a busy place no matter the day, no matter the season. But at 5:00AM, things are a little more calm. Parsons sets out obstacles to maneuver around, and shows new riders how to lean into each other in a peloton setting. She snaps pictures of everyone’s progress. First light on the bike with a team of others just hoping to get better at riding is something that doesn’t seem to get old, at least not for Parsons.
“Tara Parsons and Mim Gilbert were the first people who really welcomed me and helped me out,” Faulkner said. “I remember them telling me what chamois cream was. They bought me my first arm warmers – all the stuff that you just don’t know on your own.”
Putting in the work
Faulkner, in turn, was the dream pupil for CRCA: eager, smart, driven, and with no experience in the sport to speak of. “We devote a lot of energy to getting women and women-identifying people into the sport because we’re underrepresented,” Parsons told Escape. Parsons moved to NYC in the mid-1990s, right after college. She started racing with CRCA in 1997, and began coaching soon after. So by the time she met Faulkner, she had loads of experience coaching and cultivating talent.
Putting an effort into women and underrepresented populations is a core part of CRCA’s mission. Randy Locklair, CRCA’s membership director, told Escape that the women’s development series was something he knew he had to support early on: “It was an absolute no-brainer to create a space in which women could come try bike racing as primary participants, not as an afterthought tagged onto a mostly male-oriented event.”
The women’s development series still exists, with the same mission to get more women and women-identifying people racing bikes. “It also led to other changes at CRCA,” Locklair said, “including our equity-based pricing, where women/trans/femme racers pay a membership fee that is tied to the published gender pay gap.” That amount, right now, is 82 percent of the cost of a standard membership.
It was Dave Jordan, one of the most prolific bike racers and coaches in NYC, who in 2010 really revved up the race program focused on developing new riders. When Jordan passed away in 2012 due to complications from a brain tumor, Alan Buday took the reins as head coach and continued his legacy with the support of the Jordan family.
In 2017, Specialized partnered with the CRCA to help support the women’s development series and Gilbert, one of the team leaders, invited Faulkner to join the program. There is no detail too small to leave untouched, Gilbert told Escape. “We took development racers through laps of Central Park, showing them where the race start was, where bag drop was, where the finish was, and what to expect on race morning. We wanted to take some of the mystery out of race morning as well as introducing the racers to each other and ourselves so they’d have a friendly face or two on race morning. It worked, and we ran a really robust series where so many racers got to experience racing in a positive way.”
Faulkner’s entry to club racing was eager, but not the smoothest start. “I remember telling Alan [Buday] that I had invited a new racer along to try out,” Gilbert recalled. “We met at Tavern on the Green and Kristen was a minute or two late. She rode down to our group, stopped and promptly fell over on her bike at Alan’s feet as she wasn’t able to clip out. I remember Alan looking at me as if to say, ‘Are you sure?’ But by the end of the two-hour training session she was absolutely part of the team.”
Faulkner said that Buday was “the first coach I ever had on a bike. And he really took me from beginner level to learning the ropes of bike racing. He’s still one of my close friends, and still follows my career, so I’m super grateful for him.”
Gilbert said that Faulkner spent the rest of that season as the ultimate teammate, gaining good results for herself as well as supporting the higher-category racers in our open races. “She threw herself into racing, heading out to stage races, training hard with the team and working closely with Alan one-on-one to improve. She took every bit of advice that was given to her. And the results started coming.”
Faulkner couldn’t get enough of the opportunities to learn. “I remember that I was spending way too much time on the front. I didn’t realize how to race strategically, and to save energy and to draft and all that. So I was the girl on the front drilling it, kind of a little bit clueless,” she said. “And it took me a few races to realize that’s not how you’re supposed to race. And every race, I got more tactical and better and eventually learned how to race properly.”
Fast forward
Neither Parsons nor Gilbert is surprised that Faulkner’s progression skyrocketed. Even though Faulkner didn’t start racing bikes at a young age like most of the rest of the WorldTour scene, she learned quickly, and had passion. She also had the mind of someone who attended Harvard and worked in finance.
Faulkner eventually took a start-up job in California, and used it as an opportunity to keep riding and racing. There she got picked up by TIBCO-SVB in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and began racing that fall in Europe under the tutelage of renowned talent scout and mentor Linda Jackson. In her first race with the team, the UCI-rated Tour Feminin de l’Ardêche, she promptly won a stage.
“It just made me so happy when I realized she was riding with TIBCO out there and that she was going to Europe,” said Parsons, who continues to follow Faulkner’s career closely. She tends to downplay her role in Faulkner’s success, as many do, but sometimes just believing in someone and encouraging them is enough to change a life. But even then, Faulkner wasn’t 100% sure she was all in, according to Parsons.
“She spent the first couple of months racing full-time in Europe and working her full-time job in California,” Parsons said. “It was insane. I don’t know how she did it. Not only was she competing with the best who had been riding bikes since they were teenagers, if not earlier, she was also balancing a full-time finance job.
“Eventually she realized that if she wanted to be good at either of them, she had to really choose, and dedicate herself. Thankfully, she chose bikes.”
Like most of the rest of the world, Parsons watched Faulkner dance through the Olympic road race with brilliant tactics. When most were shocked that she went solo with 3 km to go, Parsons saw it as the perfect moment. Faulkner’s track experience, in particular in the team pursuit – where she was part of the USA’s gold medal-winning squad – meant she had totally perfected the 3 km solo flyer. “I felt like she executed the final part of the road race in the same way that she executed getting herself there in the first place,” said Parsons.
Gilbert said of the race, “People keep saying that she was a surprise gold medalist, but anyone who has spent any time with her knows that’s not true. She has such heart, and when she sets about achieving her dreams, there’s no stopping her.”
There wasn’t much time for Faulkner to celebrate, however; just days after her team pursuit gold, she lined up in Rotterdam, the Netherlands for the start of the Tour de France Femmes. Through three stages of fast, hectic racing, she’s in seventh place overall, just six seconds behind yellow jersey Demi Vollering and looking at two stages on the same kind of hilly, punchy roads as she won on in Paris.
But even as she races forward, Faulkner is still an enormous fan of where she got her start. “I hope more programs across the U.S. will adopt this model and help get more women on bikes,” Faulkner told Escape. “CRCA’s development program changed my life, and I cannot express enough gratitude to them for that.”
Parsons said that after the Olympic road race, Faulkner texted her and Gilbert. “She messaged us together. And thanked us for helping start her dream.”
Micah Ling is a Colorado-based freelance writer and longtime cycling journalist; this is her first story for Escape. Abby Mickey contributed reporting to this story from the TdFF.
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