31-year-old Harvard grad just won a gold medal for the U.S. in the Olympics—in a sport she learned 6 years ago

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Gold medalist Kristen Faulkner of Team United States poses on the podium during the Women's Road Race on day nine of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Trocadero on August 04, 2024 in Paris, France. Kristen Faulkner ended a 40-year-drought for the U.S. in the Paris Olympics — in a sport she picked up for fun six years ago. On Sunday, the 31-year-old became the first American rider to win gold in the women's road race since Connie Carpenter did so in the 1984 Los Angeles games. Faulkner grew up hiking and rowing in Homer, Alaska, a small city on the Kenai Peninsula, and joined the women's crew team at Harvard University, where she graduated in 2016. She didn't start competitive cycling until 2017 when she moved to New York to work as a venture capitalist. "I still needed that outdoors fix that was such a big part of my life," the Olympian told NBC News in a recent interview. Faulkner wasn't even supposed to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympics but was called up to Team USA in early July after Taylor Knibb resigned her spot in the road race to focus on the Olympic time trial and triathlon events. "This is a dream come true," she told reporters after the race. "I'm still looking at that finish line sign wondering how my name got there." Quitting a career in finance to be a full-time athlete Faulkner signed up for an introductory clinic for women's cycling in New York City's Central Park and by 2020, she was racing for Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank, then the longest-running professional women's cycling team in North America. In early 2021, she quit venture capital to commit to the sport full-time — a move that she assumed would be a brief detour from her career. "I was like, 'This will be a two, three-year thing,'" she told the Wall Street Journal. Instead, Faulkner, who now rides for the American Continental Women Team EF-Oatly-Cannondale, said she's developed an even deeper passion for the sport: the competitiveness, the camaraderie with her teammates, even the constant grind of training. Faulkner, who now lives in San Francisco, rides around 50 miles a day. She told the Associated Press that her career as a venture capitalist has been instrumental in her success as a professional athlete. "I learned how to calculate risks and assess risks," she said. "In a race I take that mindset with me: What is the risk-reward ratio? Knowing when to go all in." Overcoming a career-threatening injury to win gold at the Olympics