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PARIS — American Kristen Faulkner pulled off a major upset as she won the women’s road-race gold medal at the Paris Olympics on Sunday, making the most of the top riders’ mind games to snatch the biggest victory of her career.

Faulkner, along with Belgian Lotte Kopecky, caught the leading duo of Dutch great Marianne Vos and Hungarian Blanka Vas with 3.4 kilometers remaining and immediately produced a brutal acceleration.

Vas, Vos and Kopecky looked at each other, all three reluctant to burn the little energy they had left to chase, and let Faulkner ride to glory in slightly under four hours in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

Faulkner, 31, from Homer, Alaska, seemed in such disbelief that despite her comfortable advantage on the Pont d’Iena, she did not celebrate as she crossed the finish line.

“It’s a dream come true,” Faulkner said. “I knew Kopecky wanted to catch the front two, so I knew she’d ride with me, and I also knew if we caught them I had to attack because I could not beat them at the line.”

Vos won the three-women sprint to take silver — 58 seconds behind Faulkner — and Kopecky claimed the bronze.

“We managed to bridge the gap (with Vas and Vos), and we all looked at each other,” world champion Kopecky told reporters. “On paper, Marianne was the fastest sprinter, so it made me think and I did not want to make the effort. So I focused on getting a medal.”

The first decisive moment came when American Chloe Dygert crashed on a corner just before the Butte Montmartre climb, causing a bunch split.

Kopecky was on the wrong side of it, but she fought her way back in the descent before Vos and Vas pulled away.

Belgium coach Ludwig Willem justified Kopecky’s risk-averse strategy.

“It is indeed a poker game; you keep an eye on one another,” he told reporters. “One cannot say she played it badly. At this level, one is fighting for an Olympic title, one has to take risks, and you can end up with bronze instead of gold, but she also could have ended up in fourth position.

For Vos, a 14-time world champion across four cycling disciplines, it was a missed opportunity to add to her London 2012 road-race title and 2008 Beijing points race gold medal on the track.

“At the end, I didn’t have much left anymore, so when they came back, I watched Kopecky, hoping she would make the effort to close the gap (with Faulkner),” Vos told reporters.

Meanwhile, Faulkner needed luck just to be part of the competition.

Though she won the U.S. road race title in May, she didn’t qualify for the Olympic road race, with Dygert and Taylor Knibb earning the spots. But Knibb withdrew last month to focus on the Olympic triathlon, and Faulkner was tabbed as her replacement.

–Reuters, Special to Field Level Media