After winning her third consecutive gold medal in the women’s time trial, Kristin Armstrong grabbed her 5-year-old son Lucas near the finish line and gave him a tight, loving hug while tears flowed from her eyes.
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USA’s Kristin Armstrong reacts after winning the Women’s Individual Time Trial event at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on August 10, 2016.
Armstrong also became the oldest female cycling gold medalist of all time, as she celebrated her 43rd birthday on Thursday.
“I don’t have words to describe it”.
After today’s race, Armstrong told reporters that she has repeatedly faced questions about why she’s come out of retirement and still wants to compete at an elite level despite her age and the several hip surgeries she underwent back in 2013. Today the stars aligned.
And she beat the silver medalist, 36-year-old Olga Zabelinskaya of Russian Federation, by 5.55 seconds in the event where each competitor simply races against the clock.
“This was the last time for me to try to win an Olympic medal”, said Cancellara, who crashed in London four years ago. I dug so deep.
Armstrong, whose son was born in 2010, said that being a mother, along with working as the director of community health at a hospital in Boise, Idaho, keeps her grounded.
Great Britain’s Emma Pooley finished 14th in the women’s time trial.. The last 24 hours she has been leaving me notes.
“They chose an athlete who hasn’t raced outside the United States since she was in London!” She failed to finish the course on that rainy day, but she played an important role in helping her US teammate Mara Abbott place fourth. The last gold medal was nearly certainly her toughest.
“And so the story line there was really about Kristin Armstrong finding a way to cap off her career with success”, Dreier says.
She retired for a second time shortly after the London Olympics, then decided earlier this year to pursue a third gold medal.
The third gold will hopefully allow Armstrong to continue her campaign to help the public understand that she is not the wife of Lance Armstrong, whose ex-wife is also named Kristin. “Finishing after 16 years with a double gold: it’s not bad”, Cancellara said after collecting his medal. Zabelinskaya, who served an 18-month suspension in 2014-15 for testing positive for a banned stimulant, said she had never doped and that the fact she was breastfeeding her youngest child at the time of the test proved it.
Zabelinskaya, who won bronze in both the road race and the time trial in 2012, finished behind Armstrong.
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“I still have to pinch myself”, she said.
