{shortcode-e7c23d1370dbcc2ef2f8c456a41a6b8647fb93d0}

Kristen T. Faulkner ’16 helped secure Team USA its first gold medal in track cycling team pursuit Wednesday in a final race against New Zealand, days after she beat expectations in her Olympic debut to nab an individual gold in the road race.

The race started off rocky for the four Americans — including former team pursuit Olympians Chloe Dygert, Jennifer Valente, and Lily Williams — as a gap opened up between the first two and last two members of the team.

But the group quickly managed to regroup, gaining more than a second on the New Zealand team and looking poised to topple the world record of 4:04.242 set by Germany in the last Olympics.

In the last 750 meters of the race, however, the American squad again began to come apart, bleeding time to the Kiwis as they opened gaps in their aerodynamic formation.

But their impressive lead would prove too wide to overcome.

The U.S. team managed to fend off the New Zealand team — finishing a little more than six-tenths of a second ahead with a time of 4:04.306.

With the gold, Faulkner — who called the Olympics her “biggest life dream” — will leave Paris with two medals less than a decade after she took up the sport and only three years after she quit her venture capital job to train full time.

Faulkner also proved she could handle the pressure of the higher expectations in the team pursuit event.

Going into the event, all eyes were on the American cyclists, who have medaled in every Games in women’s team pursuit since it was introduced in 2012, but have always fallen short of gold.

From the outset of the final, the U.S. and New Zealand squads set a blistering pace.

The U.S. team set a national record in qualifying with a time of 4:05.238, but the result was second to that of the New Zealanders, who recorded a time of 4:04.679.

In the next round of racing, the U.S. faced off against Great Britain — the event’s gold medalists in London and Rio — to compete for a spot in the final.

The teams looked remarkably evenly matched, with the U.S. running only a few tenths ahead of Great Britain for most of the race. The U.S. team managed to stay ahead into the finish and posted a time of 4:04.629 — beating the 4:04.818 time of the New Zealand team in their heat against Italy.

In the end, only the U.S. team was able to improve on their time in the final race — a feat that secured them the gold medal.

Faulkner’s medal brings Harvard’s tally to 11 — only one shy of an all-time best of 12 medals in the 1896 Games — and solidifies her standing at the very top of a sport that she started as a hobby.

—Staff writer Jo B. Lemann can be reached at jo.lemann@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @Jo_Lemann.