{"id":34090,"date":"2025-07-30T10:30:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T10:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/34090\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T10:30:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T10:30:19","slug":"kristen-faulkners-luckless-tour-de-france-femmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/34090\/","title":{"rendered":"Kristen Faulkner’s Luckless Tour de France Femmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”><\/p>\n

Devoid of her gold bike and without any luck on her side, Kristen Faulkner appears to be cursed during the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was touch and go whether or not the reigning Olympic and American road race champion would begin the race last Saturday. After being so unwell in the preceding 10 days, she could barely turn her pedals in training. But the EF Education-Oatly 32-year-old did take to the startline in Vannes.<\/p>\n

Things, however, have not been on an upward trajectory since then. Faulkner<\/a> crashed on stage 2, breaking her customized Cannondale, and only just made the time cut.<\/p>\n

Then on stage 4 she fell 6 kilometers from the line, returning to her team\u2019s bus with cuts and grazes all down her left side. Only one rider, Canadian Kiara Lylyk, is below her in the general classification.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was super, super sick the week before [the race] and the day before we weren\u2019t sure if I was going to start because I was feeling so ill,\u201d she told Velo at the start of stage 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was severe fatigue, electrolyte imbalance \u2014 a lot of things adding up. I was so weak that I couldn\u2019t even ride 100 watts for 10 days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on her stage 2 fall, she said: \u201cI was starting to turn the corner the day before so we decided to give it a shot and see what happens. The hope was that I\u2019d have an easy first few days.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was riding along, mid-pack, on a descent, and the road split at one point. There was a curb in the middle of the road, some girl hit it and flew off her bike and into me, and then I flew into the bushes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pretty rattled from the fall and it was pretty hard on the body when I\u2019m already feeling pretty tired. It took me a little while to get back on my bike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making sure she crossed the line in time became a concern as the race wore on. \u201cI just didn\u2019t have the strength to chase back in the first 10 minutes, and by the time I had the strength to push on, the peloton was gone and at that point it was just about making the time cut,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"KristenThe Olympic champion has had two falls in four days.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not riding full gas and was trying to conserve as much energy as I could, but then in the last 5 kilometers I had to go pretty hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as painful for Faulkner was that her bike snapped in half as a result of her fall. \u201cMy heart aches as well as my body,\u201d she laughed. \u201cI\u2019ll have to come up with some really cool social media ideas and then they [Cannondale] might paint me a gold bike again!\u201d<\/p>\n

Faulkner refused to speak with the media after her latest fall on stage 4, but didn\u2019t appear to be suffering from anything more severe than minor abrasions.<\/p>\n

At the start of the day, however, she conceded she was not in stage-winning form. Her duty will be protecting her EF team leader C\u00e9drine Kerbaol as well as she can.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m doing better every day and I think I am riding my way into this Tour,\u201d Faulkner said. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be in a position to try to win stages, but I feel like I\u2019m in a position where I can help my team a lot, and that\u2019s what I plan to do in the next week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”> Devoid of her gold bike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,25833,82,19487],"class_list":["post-34090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-kristen-faulkner","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france-femmes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}