‘I can be really proud to go out on such a high’ – Grace Brown signing off in style with Olympic Games gold

When Grace Brown started out as a runner, she thought that perhaps there was a chance, if all went well, that maybe she could get picked for an Olympic Games team but a switch to the bike has now delivered an even bigger dream. The 32 year old Australian is set to walk away from a six-year career as a professional cyclist, with a cache of prestigious victories, including the ultimate prize of an Olympic gold medal.

The Paris Games had always loomed large in the Victorian’s plans for her 2024 season, with clear potential clear to clinch a time trial medal given her fourth in Tokyo and silver medals at the last two world championships. Then in June she raised the already high stakes further, announcing that this Olympics and this season would be her last, and concluding the retirement announcement by saying ‘let’s see if I can sign off in style’. 

There may still be some some key goals of the season left but, no matter what happens next, after her stellar time trial performance on the rain soaked roads of Paris on Saturday Brown has clearly delivered on her sign off goal. 

“I think I can be really proud to go out on such a high,” Brown told reporters in Paris after claiming gold.

The winning margin of 1:31 to second-placed Anna Henderson (Great Britain) was one the rider herself described as “a bit insane to be honest” with that amount of time covering the entire top five in Tokyo and at the 2023 World Championships just six seconds separated Brown from winner Chloe Dygert (United States). 

Given her experience of tight margins in the past, Brown was determined not to let her focus on extracting every last second wane even when the victory looked assured.

“It was one of my strategies to really just focus on everything up until I crossed the finish line,” said Brown. “I was coming here to do my fastest, strongest race that I could do, and whatever the result was after the line I was going to be happy with it, as long as I executed my race the best that I could.”

“Of course, I planned to do a race that could win me a gold medal,” she added.

That plan, despite the tricky wet conditions which bought some others unstuck, unfolded perfectly for Brown right from the opening stages.

“At the first check, I was up five seconds on Chloe Dygert, who usually goes out really hard in the start. This is the first time that I’ve ever beaten her on the first time check so I was pretty confident after that,” said Brown. “The fact that I was feeling good and I could maintain my pace, I didn’t feel like I was really ever pushing it, meant that I was on for a good one and then each time check, it was building.

“So coming into the line, I just gave it everything, everything that I had left in the last couple of Ks, and I think I emptied the tank pretty well, but never faded. It was a good race.”

A race good enough to send her into a whole new orbit.

New stratosphere

Brown has finished the year as Australia’s top ranked Women’s WorldTour cyclist for the past three seasons and repeatedly delivered prestigious top-tier victories on the road, where she currently races with French team FDJ-SUEZ, but the Olympic gold medal throws her into a whole new stratosphere. Women’s WorldTour cycling is a sport that lurks in the shadows of the sporting spotlight in her home nation, particularly when compared with the blinding glare turned on the Olympic Games.

“These are Aussie legends and the names I’ve been hearing my whole life,” said Brown when asked how it felt to be among the list of Australians who had won Olympic gold medals. She then recounted the esteem with which she had viewed those like swimmer Susie O’Neill and runner Cathy Freeman after their Olympic wins captured her attention as a child in the Sydney 2000 Games.

“To be a gold medalists like them is insane,” said Brown. “It’s hard to get your head around other people viewing little old me in that same way. I think it might take a little while to get used to.”

Though the rider who first picked up cycling in 2015 after running injuries curtailed her ambitions in that sport, will have little option but to get used to the elevated attention level. On Sunday morning in Australia Brown’s success was splashed across the mainstream media as she became the nation’s first gold medallist of the Paris Olympic Games.

To add even further to the weight of the achievement, it was also Australia’s first ever medal in the women’s time trial at the Olympic Games, with the previous best results in the discipline at the Olympics having come from Michael Rogers and Rohan Dennis, who took bronze in the men’s time trial. 

Still as large as Saturday’s result looms, there are other goals that continue to demand Brown’s attention in her final season, with the Tour de France Femmes and Road World Championships still to unfold. But first there is also one more Olympic opportunity, the 158km women’s road race on Sunday August 4, where she will be the leading contender in an Australian team that also includes national champion Ruby Roseman-Gannon and accomplished domestique Lauretta Hanson.

“We’ll just celebrate this one and recover and get ready for the next one,” said Brown. “But I think for the road race I’ll be able to race a bit more relaxed, take it in my stride and see what opportunities I can take. I’ve got one gold medal, and that’s pretty good.”