Kristen Faulkner is about to lead BikeExchange-Jayco into a potential yellow-jersey performance at the eight-day Tour de France Femmes. The first women’s Tour de France since the 1980s kicks off on Sunday in Paris for a highly anticipated eight days of racing.
“This is going to be the most iconic race of my life, and being part of the energy from the fans, riders and everyone there, it will be contagious,” Faulkner said in a phone interview with Cyclingnews from the airport in Barcelona on Friday evening.
“From a racing standpoint, I’m looking forward to what I can do from a leadership standpoint. It’s going to be exciting to lift the curtain and see what I can do.”
The American had a hugely successful Giro Donne this month, winning two stages and the mountains classification. But she was nearly forced to miss the Tour de France Femmes after a case of COVID-19 during the days following the race. She was feeling healthy and admitted she was lucky to have tested negative for the virus at the last-possible cut-off point in order to start the race on Sunday.
“I had COVID last week and just tested negative last night, which was the last possible night I could test negative to race. I had to delay my flight by two days, so I’m arriving late, but the good news is that I made the cut-off to race,” Faulkner said.
Faulkner’s teammate Amanda Spratt abandoned the Giro due to COVID-19, and Faulkner said she didn’t test positive until the day she returned home from the race.
“I got COVID the day after the Giro. I didn’t have a bad case. I tested negative every day at the Giro, but the day after I got home, I did a rapid test, which was positive. I kept testing positive for the last ten days, and then last night, I tested negative. The timing was not ideal, but if I was going to have it, the timing couldn’t have been better because of the cut-off date.”
Faulkner is in a leadership role at the Tour de France Femmes, with a support team that includes Spratt, Ane Santesteban, Alex Manly, Urška Žigart, and Ruby Roseman-Gannon. She said she was looking forward to this new role and expressed confidence in the team around her.
“I haven’t been a GC leader for the team at all, but I’ve been in a lot of situations where I’ve been supporting GC leaders and still being in the race when it counts. That gives me a lot of confidence going in. We have a deep team, and Ane and Amanda are both so strong, and I have confidence that they will be there, which makes me feel more…
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