ELANCOURT, France – For a few minutes, Durango’s Savilia Blunk held her spot at the front of the pack during the women’s mountain biking race at the Paris 2024 Olympics. All around her, fans five-deep cheered and red, white and blue flags waved.
The flags were all stripes and no stars, however, á la the French banner, and they waved with fervor as countrywomen raced from bell to bell in a sprint to seize the gold medal on Sunday.
Blunk’s American teammate Haley Batten overcame a broken wheel to celebrate the USA’s first silver medal in the sport. Sweden’s Jenny Rissveds, who won the gold in 2016, took the bronze.
Like the flags, Blunk’s advantage wasn’t quite what it seemed.
Her UCI ranking of fifth earned her an esteemed place on the front row. Racing in her first Olympics, however, the 25-year-old got sucked into the pack soon after the starting bell sounded.
After seven laps around the roughly 2½-mile course, Blunk finished 12th. Her 1 hour, 31 minutes, 52 seconds on the course trailed Pauline Ferrand-Prévot by nearly six minutes.
“The start was just so fast,” Alec Pascalina, USA Cycling’s director of mountain biking said.
Blunk showed grit by going from 16th – nearly midpack in the 36-racer field and where she landed after two laps – to 12th.
A new rule implemented this Olympics after Switzerland swept the podium in Tokyo restricts countries to just two racers apiece. That makes for a smaller field and more gaps between racers. Blunk rarely had anyone to race with and had to pull herself up the standings under her own power.
Ferrand-Prévot nearly took her foot off the gas. She so dominated the course that even Batten, the silver medalist out of Park City, barely got within three minutes of the Frenchwoman’s time.
Rissveds and Batten took advantage of a flat tire by the Netherlands’ Puck Pieterse, who had been all alone in second, to move into medal contention. By then, though, Batten had already battled back after having to run across a large portion of the course to get her own new tire, which she said she smashed on the trail.
Batten’s medal is the third for the United States since mountain biking became an Olympic sport in 1996. Susan DeMattei won bronze that year and Georgia Gould earned bronze in 2012.
Kristen Armstrong, who has won three gold medals in road cycling and now coaches Batten in mountain biking, said first-time Olympians face a greater challenge than veterans of the Games.
“One of the blessings Haley had was being, I call it a ‘participant’ in Tokyo,” Armstrong said. “I find that the first Olympic Games is a lot. Athletes will disagree with me because they’re like, ‘No, I’m here to compete.’ I’m like, ‘Let’s get through that first one.’ Because it is a lot.”
It took Ferrand-Prévot four Olympics to finally add the last jewel to her mountain biking crown. The reigning world champion said she planned to retire from mountain biking and will instead pursue road racing.
“I needed to be free in my head,” she said. “Winning or not, I would have stopped anyway. I don’t see myself doing this again, training for the Olympics again. It doesn’t make sense for me.”
While that chapter is ending, Batten said she plans to stay around for at least four more years. Watching Ferrand-Prévot win on her home soil, with all those flags waving around her, cemented her determination to not only compete in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, but to win it.
“I got to see Pauline win here, and the next one’s mine,” she said. “To have the Olympics in your home country is absolutely incredible. And I think (winning gold in 2028) is the bigger goal.”
Julie Jag is a former sports reporter for The Durango Herald and now works at the Salt Lake Tribune. She is covering the Summer Olympics from Paris.
