The guest of honor at Thursday night’s Visit Virginia Blue Ridge’s annual meeting at Salem Civic Center really did not need the name tag that was clipped to her left lapel.
The navy blue warmup jacket with “USA” stitched in large red letters and the two freshly minted gold medals she carried back from the Paris Olympics clearly identified Jennifer Valente.
America’s most decorated female cyclist in Olympic history rides for the Roanoke-based Virginia’s Blue Ridge Twenty24 team. Thursday, just before leaving to compete in the UCI World Championships in Denmark, Valente stopped pedaling long enough to reflect on her career and what might be down the road.
The 29-year-old San Diego native has occasionally trained in the Roanoke Valley since 2022, when VBR Twenty24’s general manager and founder Nicola Cranmer moved the team from California.
By then, Valente already had won a gold medal in Women’s Omnium and a bronze in Team Pursuit in the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021, along with a silver medal in Team Pursuit in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
In August in the Saint-Quentin-En-Yveslines Velodrome in the suburbs of Paris, she added gold in Team Pursuit and Women’s Omnium, giving her five Olympics medals to go with seven golds in World Championships, 12 national junior titles and one world junior championship.
An interview with Jennifer Valente, part 2. Video by Robert Anderson.
Valente is not sure what to expect at the Oct. 16-20 World Championships.
“In a world championship that’s following an Olympics is always a little bit different because you have a wide range of athletes, people who are coming off an Olympics like myself and people who just missed their Olympic teams for their countries and programs that are entirely rebuilding with young athletes,” she said.
“My expectations are to enjoy it, soak in the moment maybe that has been the buildup to this entire whirlwind. It’s kind of a tough double to do both, only a couple months apart.”
Valente did a training run Friday morning on the Blue Ridge Parkway before boarding a flight. The three-time Olympics champion said she makes “three or four” trips a year to the Roanoke Valley to ride with teammates. Thursday was her first trip back to Virginia since the Paris Games.
“I love the hills, and I’m not a climber,” she said. “But as a training tool, I think it’s an incredible asset.
“Being able to pick and choose where to do a workout. The Roanoke Valley has all of that. The hills are a big part of that. The parkway is a big part of that, looking for long stretches of road … uphill, downhill, flat, rolling, whatever you’re looking for to get the work in.”
While Cranmer broke some news Thursday by proclaiming that the team’s new name next year will be Virginia’s Blue Ridge Twenty28, how much longer will Valente’s career last? She continues to work on a degree at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, and while cycling pays the bills, the money is nowhere near what professional World Tour riders earn.
The minimum estimated salary for a World Tour rider, according to bikelegalfirm.com, is just under $60,000 with Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar earning $6 million annually.
“One of those tour riders, probably one person is twice our budget,” said Cranmer, who has a contract on a house in Salem and plans to stay in the Roanoke Valley. “In Europe, where there’s a bigger, richer history of cycling there’s more money for sure.
“We’re not like the WNBA or anything, but you can do OK. It’s just a small percent that I would say make a good living wage, but we’ll rely on sponsorships and donations. We’re 501c3 non-profit, and we run a pretty tight, lean ship. We get a lot done for our budget.”
Cranmer sees no reason that the most decorated women’s cyclist in U.S. Olympics history will give up the pursuit anytime soon.
“She’s really smart. She’s not on social media,” Cranmer said. “She doesn’t waste her time doing things that don’t serve her. She leads a pretty private life. She focuses on the craft of cycling and has a sort of a life outside of cycling.”
Like that nametag she wore Thursday that just read “Jennifer,” Valente keeps her plans close to the vest.
“Cycling is pretty special because the prime [age] can be a pretty big range,” she said. It could be 18 for some people or it could be early 30s for other people. To be successful, it requires a combination of the physical attributes that are needed but also the skill, the strategy and the experience that’s needed. You can win a lot of bike races with your brain if you have a certain level of physical ability.”
At age 18, it would seem that Roanoke College freshman cyclist Lauren Weigel’s career is just beginning if not for the fact she has been competing regionally and nationally since 2015. The Olympics success of Valente and other VBR riders has not escaped the notice of Weigel, who hails from Oronoco, Minnesota.
Weigel already has enjoyed success on a national level. She and her twin sister, Ragan, who also is a Roanoke College freshman, finished first and second respectively in the inaugural USA 17-18 Gravel Nationals in Gehring, Nebraska, in 2023 with VBR junior cyclist Charlotte Lehman in third place.
Thursday night, the Weigel twins watched a presentation in Salem that included video replay of Valente atop the podium in Paris, gold medal around her neck, with the “Star Spangled Banner” playing in the background.
“A huge inspiration for everyone here,” Lauren Weigel said. “I aspire to be like Jennifer.”
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Publish date : 2024-10-15 21:52:00
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