She’d already decided to retire. Now Grace Brown has won her first Olympic gold medal

As Grace Brown’s ecstatic family stood on the cobbled streets of Paris where the 32-year-old road cyclist had just blitzed her rivals to win Australia’s first gold medal of these Olympics in the women’s time trial, the words came tumbling out as they tried to convey what this moment meant to them.

On a family holiday to Hamilton Island one year, they had watched from a balcony as Brown, recovering from a broken leg, ran in the ocean below. “She’s planned. She’s worked. She’s struggled. It’s just been so much discipline and resilience,” her father, Tony Brown, told Channel Nine.

“Oh, the dedication,” said her mother, Ruth Stewart. “She’s just put so much into it and she’s got there.”

Brown, a former runner who grew up in Camperdown in south-western Victoria, had already decided she would retire from competitive cycling at the end of the season, according to her parents, who were beside the course watching on their phones as she crossed the finish line at Pont Alexandre III.

The conditions were made treacherous by the rain, but Brown stayed focused to claim Australia’s first gold medal in road cycling since the 2004 Athens Olympics.

“She’s already announced that she’s going to finish up and this is how she’s going out,” Ruth said.

Grace Brown won Australia’s first gold medal of the Paris Games – winning the women’s individual time trial on road cycling.Credit: Getty Images

They wore T-shirts emblazoned with a photo of their daughter, tricked up with a gold medal and an Australian flag.

Brown, who only switched to cycling from middle and long-distance running eight years ago because she felt it would be easier on her legs, narrowly missed the medals at the Tokyo Olympics. Then she twice finished in second place in the road cycling world championships’ time trial in 2022 and 2023.

Anna Henderson of Britain took silver and American Chloe Dygert claimed bronze.

But Brown destroyed the field; the gap between first and second was 91 seconds, an eternity in the context of a ride that lasted less than 40 minutes for the 32.4 kilometre course.

“I really think I did [have the perfect race]. I was able to execute my plan pretty much to perfection if not better,” she told Nine after claiming gold. “I can’t ask for a better day. It’s raining, but it really didn’t dampen my spirits. Rain doesn’t bother me too much,” she told Nine.

Several riders slid and fell on wet and cobbled corners, with defending champion Dygert the biggest casualty.

She hit the deck on a corner in the Bois de Vincennes, which effectively ended her chances of retaining her title and cost her second place as she ended 0.87 seconds behind Henderson.

Brown moved to Melbourne from Camperdown to go to boarding school and still lives there, but spends much of the year training overseas, driven to reach the pinnacle in the career she took up in her 20s.

Gold medallist Grace Brown with her with silver medallist Anna Henderson Great Britain and bronze medallist Chloe Dygert of the United States.Credit: Getty Images

“I started my sports career in running: cross-country and middle-to-long distances on the track, so from 1500 metres to 5 kilometres. I competed nationally but never outside of Australia,” Brown told cycling website Velo last year.

“My physique was actually not that great for running, and I suffered from a long line of injuries like stress fractures. After so many years of getting injured and recovering again I was fed up with it all. Some people had suggested I should ride a bike, but I held that off. I did some commuting on a bike but that was it. But shortly after university I bought my first carbon bike.”

Brown had no idea that some of her rivals had slid into trouble.

“Because it was wet, we had to go a bit slower through the corners and that helped me take some little breaks along the way. I didn’t really know that a lot of my competitors were crashing,” she said.

“If you’re starting and you know that everyone’s crashing, then you have a little bit more fear about the race. So it was good that I didn’t know.”

Brown stayed upright and powered on. “Just to make Australia proud, winning the first gold medal for our nation, setting the medal table on its way,” she said as she stood in the drizzle. “I hope I inspire the other athletes to push their limits and go after similar results,” she said.

with Reuters

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