Gold Fever has struck the Roanoke-Blacksburg area again.
One day after Blacksburg resident Cole Hocker won the men’s 1,500-meter run at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, another athlete with local ties earned a gold medal Wednesday.
Jennifer Valente, a San Diego native who has trained in the Roanoke area with a group of professional cyclists, earned a gold medal for the United States in team pursuit by setting a national record.
Valente combined with teammates Chloe Dygert, Lily Williams and Kristen Faulkner to cover 4 kilometers in the Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome in 4 minutes, 4.036 seconds to take the gold medal ahead of silver medalist New Zealand’s 4:04.927.
The U.S. quartet won a semifinal earlier Wednesday with a time of 4:04.629, just ahead of Great Britain’s 4:04.908. The winning semifinal time was a new national record, but it only lasted 4 1/2 hours before Valente, Dygert, Williams and Faulkner broke it for a second time in the same day.
Germany owns the world and Olympic records at 4:04.242, set in Tokyo in 2021.
The gold medal was the second for Valente, who won gold in the Women’s Omnium and a bronze team pursuit in Tokyo in 2021. She earned a silver medal in team pursuit in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Valente, 29, trains in the Roanoke Valley with the Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24 cycling team.
Valente will compete in Women’s Madison on Friday and Women’s Omnium on Sunday.
