Kristen Faulkner is a professional cyclist and she recently won gold in two events at the 2024 Paris Olympics, women's individual road race and women's track cycling team pursuit. It was a dream come true. Ever since she was a kid — growing up in Homer, Alaska — she wanted to compete in the Olympics. As a young girl, she’d watch it on TV and it was the only time she saw women competing in professional sports. But it takes more than just a dream and a positive attitude to make it to the level that Kristen’s at now. She says there’s a process: You have to be humble and analytical and constantly learning. You also have to be willing to take risks. 

In 2016, Kristen graduated from Harvard and then took a job in New York and then in San Francisco as an investment associate. She was in her mid-twenties when she quit that job and started pursuing a career in cycling. It was a decision that she agonized over — to leave a lucrative job for an uncertain one. But she eventually determined that the pros outweigh the cons, that she would rather live with no regrets. 

Her approach to cycling, like everything in her life, is about assessing what you’re good at and what you’re bad at. And then when you’ve identified what you’re bad at, you focus on it until it’s a strength. This is one of the reasons she excelled in cycling so quickly: She made her weaknesses her strengths. She approached it with the mentality of, “It’s not that I’m bad at it, it’s that I’m just not good at it yet.”

Photo by Anouk Flesch