Nine years. Ninety-one seconds.
In a sport so often defined by fine margins, the two most important numbers of Grace Brown’s career are unusually large.
The first, nine years, is how long it’s been since Brown made the bold decision to switch from being a cross-country runner to a road cyclist.
It was a decision born out of frustration with the injuries that had hampered her running career to that point. At the age of 23 she bought a bike and joined the St Kilda Cycling Club in Melbourne. She had a mixture of motivations at the time; the overriding feeling was that she had to do something that would take less of a toll on her body than pounding the pavement every day, but she also relished the social element of the club.
Did she also harbour a burning desire to one day win an Olympic gold medal in cycling? Only she can know that.
But it didn’t take long for Brown to realise that racing at the Olympics wasn’t as far off as it would have been for virtually everyone else in that situation.
Within three years she was racing for Australia at the cycling world championships. Three years after that, she finished fourth in the women’s individual time trial at the Tokyo Olympics.
Fast forward another three years, and she is now an Olympic champion.
Which brings us to the second number. Ninety-one seconds.
That was the gap between her and second-placed Anna Henderson of Great Britain, as Brown won Australia’s first gold medal of the Paris 2024 Olympics with victory in the women’s individual time trial.
With each rider only on the course for about 40 minutes, Brown’s winning margin of one minute and 31 seconds is nothing short of extraordinary.
As the 32-year-old put it herself, it was the perfect race.
“I had a plan to pace the race to win gold and I was able to execute my plan, like, pretty much to perfection, if not better,” Brown told the Nine Network.
With rain falling throughout the event, Brown had to maintain a fine balance between keeping her pace up and riding with enough caution to avoid the heavy crashes that beset several of her rivals.
She did so brilliantly, accelerating in the second half of the course to eventually run out a comfortable winner.
Brown’s Olympic campaign is not over yet, as she now turns her attention to the women’s road race next week.
Regardless of how she fares in that event, Brown is sticking to her plan of retiring from cycling at the end of the Games.
“No, it just makes me really proud of everything that I’ve done,” she said when asked if she was reconsidering that decision.
“I’ve come here and given it everything and it’s paid off. I can finish my career really satisfied.”
The Roarhttps://https://ift.tt/GyCYatv of the Day: ‘Pretty much to perfection!’ How cycling star went from elite runner to Olympic gold medallist
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