'I deserved it' - Six months on from gold-medal winning Olympic dream, Anna Kiesenhofer on how she did it

It is exactly six months since Austrian «amateur», Anna Kiesenhofer, stunned the cycling world at the Tokyo 2020 road race. With a team made up of several of the strongest riders on the professional circuit, it was a race that seemed destined to deliver for the Dutch. Kiesenhofer, however, had different ideas.

She made it into the early break, worked with her colleagues to build up a sizable lead, and then was the only rider to stay away. As Kiesenhofer reflects on having produced what is widely regarded as a heist of Hollywood proportions, if not one of the greatest upsets in sporting history, she remains one of the few people entirely unsurprised by the result. Ad/> “It came as a result of a lot of work,” she said on this week’s Cycling Show.

“So to me, it immediately felt as if I deserved it." Tokyo 2020Kenny could be tempted to push for place at Paris 202408/08/2021 AT 20:26 Kiesenhofer said that her “amateur” status worked to her advantage in more ways than one. Firstly, by rendering her something of an unknown, and therefore unlikely to be seen as much of a threat. “I used my role as an underdog,” she said.

“And I knew that people probably wouldn't chase me because I wasn't very well known… I had victories at the UCI level in the past, but those weren't important races. So I was hoping people had forgotten that I was any good.” With its long grinding gradients, the course itself, she said, was closer in profile to that of the Gran Fondos on which she had been training, than to the average professional parcours. It was, therefore, better suited to her than to most professional riders, “who have to sprint and be explosive on short climbs”.