American Olympic cyclist Chloe Dygert favorite for gold in individual time trial

The Brownsburg cyclist has overcome numerous injuries, heart surgeries and illnesses to compete in Paris in 2024.

David Bos
| Special for IndyStar

Chloe Dygert will ride for gold in the women’s individual time trial on Saturday.

BROWNSBURG – An Instagram post from Canyon Bicycles features a photo of Chloe Dygert with the following words:

Just take me to the starting line.

That’s the main issue for the 27-year-old cyclist from Brownsburg, whose superfeminine achievements stand in contrast to her human foibles.

Those who follow the sport at all will also know of her September 2020 crash in Imola, Italy, where a metal barrier cut into her thigh and could have ended her career.

As horrific as that was, it’s, well, a starting point on a list that deserves a special wing at the Mayo Clinic. She’s had heart surgery, a concussion, Epstein-Barr virus, COVID-19 and, most recently, Achilles tendon and foot injuries.

That’s just because of the cycling.

While a basketball player at Brownsburg High School, she suffered anterior cruciate ligament surgery, a broken nose, torn eyebrows, a torn labrum, sprained thumbs, and stress fractures in her shins and feet.

After all that, she remains a favorite to win a gold medal in the individual road time trial on Saturday at the Paris Olympics. The odds give Dygert a score of -165, or a 62% chance of winning.

The only Hoosier woman to win an individual gold medal at the Olympics was Evansville swimmer Lilly King in the 100-meter breaststroke in 2016.

Dygert’s coach is Kristin Armstrong, who won her third Olympic gold medal in the time trial in 2016, a day shy of her 43rd^rd birthday. Coach and rider have collected wind data and studied the route, every change of gradient, every tangent.

In a press release from her Canyon//SRAM race team, Dygert said she saw “power numbers that I haven’t seen in a long time” during training in Boise, Idaho.

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“It just goes to show you again that it’s about trusting the process, trusting the team around me and trusting God’s plan,” she said. “There were times when I didn’t think I was going to make it. But I’m here in Boise doing the final preparations and I’m feeling good.”

She has silver and bronze medals in the team pursuit on the track from Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2021 respectively. Dygert will try to win another medal in the team pursuit after the time trial and the road race on August 4.

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There is logic behind the betting line.

When Dygert is healthy, she is historically good. When she is sick, she wins no matter what.

At the 2019 World Championships in Yorkshire, England, she effectively replaced Secretariat in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, winning by 92 seconds, the largest margin ever. The previous record stood at 71 seconds.

Television commentators gave a series of brief descriptions of the ride:

“Chloe is so fast, they need a helicopter to catch her.”

“Today she officially destroys everything in her path.”

“It doesn’t even sound real.”

“She could almost have a cup of tea before she reaches the finish line.”

“It appears that there was an error made by the timing chip.”

At the World Championships a year later, during the pandemic, her torn leg changed everything. It was almost a miracle that she reached Tokyo, where she was 31^st in the road race and seventh in the individual time trial, plus bronze in the team pursuit.

She was recovering from Covid at the 2023 Road World Championships in Scotland and almost didn’t race. She still won the gold medal, albeit by six seconds. She also became the first woman to win the individual pursuit (a non-Olympic track event) and the individual time trial in the same season.

Even during that buildup, Dygert was in rehab. In November 2022, she posted on Instagram about having surgery to treat supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), a condition that causes episodes of rapid heart rate. She called it “annoying, but not life-threatening.”

The build-up for 2024 is also not going according to plan.

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Last fall, Dygert underwent surgery on her left quadriceps to remove scar tissue, which helped heal the quad and improve circulation, which aided recovery from strenuous exercise.

She had planned to start the year racing in Australia, but Achilles tendonitis during a January camp in California threw a spanner in the works.

In a span of 11 days in March she finished sixth, 36^e (a broken wheel knocked her out of the final sprint) and 43^rd in the spring classics in Belgium. In the latter she was involved in three crashes.

By then, she had decided to return to her residence in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she recovered in April. She subsequently trained in Belgium, Colorado Springs, and Boise.

After recently contracting Covid again, she wrote: “I thought this was the setback I couldn’t have.”

That is not true. It just became one more barrier in an endless steeplechase.

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In addition to the time Dygert has to recover and train for the Olympic Games, she also gains confidence from working with Armstrong, who previously coached her and is now doing so again.

“She shared her experience of dealing with pressure on and off the bike, and that is helpful,” Dygert said through her race team. “I feel blessed by God to have a strong mindset and the ability to handle pressure and adapt to all situations.”

The Paris schedule is favorable. Her best event, the individual time trial, comes first. The road race is early enough that she might not be in trouble for the team pursuit, where qualifying takes place two days later.

In Tokyo, she was tired after the road race for the individual time trial, especially after recovering so quickly from the crash in 2020.

Dygert has said she is aiming for seven Olympic Games, which would mean she would have to keep cycling until she was 43, like Armstrong.

“She wants to be known as one of the best cyclists of all time,” said Guillermo Rojas Jr., CEO of TORRE Consulting.

The record for Olympic medals by a female equestrian is six, five of them gold, by Britain’s Laura Kenny. In March, Kenny announced her retirement at the age of 32.

At 32, the Brownsburg runner still has three more Olympics to go. Inevitably, those medal totals become a target for Dygert. As her own race team posted:

She just needs to show up at the starting line this summer and the rest will follow.

Contact IndyStar correspondent David Woods at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.