Austrian Anna Kiesenhofer, an amateur at the time, sent shockwaves through both the cycling and wider sporting communities when she won Olympic gold in the women’s road race at Tokyo 2020. It was a story for the ages as she crossed the line 75 seconds ahead of Annemiek van Vleuten, who herself celebrated without realising the gold had already been claimed.
In the process, Austria’s first summer Olympic gold since 2004 and their first in cycling in 125 years was won.
Kiesenhofer has gone from amateur to professional in the years that followed, now racing with Israel-Premier Tech Roland. The historic gold has, however, added a weight of expectation that has somewhat marred her tenure as reigning Olympic champion.
“To be honest, it did affect the expectations both from other people and myself. Myself not that much because I know that, genetically, I haven’t changed since the Olympics. It’s just that other people know me now, but I’m the same person that I was before. It doesn’t make sense to think that now, magically, my watts will massively go up only because I have an Olympic gold medal; that’s not the case, but people think that,” Kiesenhofer said in an exclusive interview with Cyclingnews.
“It’s almost like a reproach when I only came 15th or whatever, people think you should win because you’re the Olympic champion – it just doesn’t make sense at all. I haven’t fundamentally changed as a person, my genetic make-up is the same. It was sometimes hard to deal with that because anything I did was framed as a disappointment – everyone was measuring it with Olympic gold,” she explained candidly.
“I’ve kind of come to terms with it, and I just look at myself and my progress. Maybe I have come full circle to how I was before the Olympic Games. It was very much the same: looking at my own progress and not getting distracted by what other people are doing or saying.”
While the victory will remain one of the greatest in Olympic history, Kiesenhofer admits that, perhaps unlike others, the dream of becoming an Olympian, let alone a gold medalist, was never a lifelong ambition.
“Before Tokyo, I didn’t really buy into the hype around the Olympics,” she said honestly. “It might sound a bit strange, but it was never a childhood dream of mine to become an Olympian. Now that I’m more in the sports bubble before I was an amateur, and now I’m a professional cyclist, I see the value more because everybody wants to be at the Olympics. In that sense,…
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