Rissveds wins Sweden’s first cycling gold for 40 years

Sweden’s Jenny Rissveds won the Olympic title in women’s cross-country mountain biking Saturday, just a week after needing stitches in her knee and elbow following a training fall. “I crashed in training, and ended up with six stitches in my knee and four in my elbow and I thought this is not going to work at all”, said the new champion. Her gold medal became the second one for Sweden in the Rio Olympic Games after swimmer Sarah Sjostrom won in the 100 meters butterfly competition.

Rissveds, 22, surprised a wealth of elder, more experienced cycling stars en route to her gold building well on the gold she won at the 2016 World Championships.

Poland’s Maja Wloszczowska was near the lead until Rissveds pulled away. “I just kept fighting through, and it paid off”.

“I had a crash then the (gear) selector wasn’t working, I thought nothing’s going right here”, she said. The reigning under-23 world champion quickly opened a gap to Wloszczowska that held steady all the way to the line.

She was cool and composed over the testing obstacles on the spectacular course, namely some wheel-jarring rocky sections on the final descent following a one-km climb, and beat Wloszczowska by 37 seconds.

Canadian Pendrel fought her way to bronze despite experiencing technical difficulties: “I feel wonderful right now”.

“It didn’t worry me too much actually because I enjoyed the course so much”, Rissveds said.

The latter almost caught her team-mate in the finishing straight but Penrdel eventually claimed bronze in a time of 1:31:14 to improve on her fourth place from Beijing 2008. “I expected Jenny and Jolanda Neff of Switzerland to be really strong and at the beginning I felt like I was a little bit better than the others but Jenny attacked and I was really suffering”.

The pre-race favorites struggled on the course.

“I was still hoping for the victory but Jenny was super strong”, the Beijing silver medalist said.