Cowl photograph: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
The Blue Ridge Mountains have the rugged panorama to form adventurers into elite athletes. Simply ask Jennifer Valente—a San Diego resident, who trains in and round Roanoke, Va., with the native skilled bike owner group, Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24—who earned two gold medals final week for the U.S. ladies’s biking staff and helped set a nationwide report within the course of.
Final Wednesday, the 29-year-old Valente rode with teammates Chloe Dygert, Lily Williams, and Kristen Faulkner to cowl 4 kilometers within the Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome, ending with a time of 4:04.036 to beat out the silver medalist staff, New Zealand (4:04.927). The U.S. staff superior within the semifinals earlier within the week with a time of 4:04.629, which initially broke the nationwide report, till the staff’s win within the finals.
Then on Sunday, Valente capped off her time in Paris by taking gold within the Ladies’s Omnium.
“The success on the Paris Olympics can also be a mirrored image of the sturdy collaborative efforts with USA Biking and the USA Biking Basis,” Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24 wrote in an Instagram publish celebrating Valente’s win. “…Collectively, we’ve labored hand in hand to make sure that each athlete had the instruments, steering, and alternatives wanted to excel on the world stage. This partnership has been invaluable in serving to us obtain our targets and attain new heights in U.S. biking historical past…We’re so happy with you Jennifer!”
Together with her two medals in Paris, Valente is now probably the most embellished bike owner in U.S. Olympic ladies’s historical past, with 5 whole medals. She beforehand gained gold within the Ladies’s Omnium in 2021 in Tokyo, the place she additionally gained a bronze in staff pursuit. She additionally gained a silver medal in staff pursuit in Rio de Janeiro 2016.
Valente’s medal journey got here a day after Cole Hocker, a runner dwelling in close by Blacksburg, gained the boys’s 1,500-meter run and took house the gold.
