Beat The Streets Toronto congratulates Kelsey Mitchell - An Olympic champion who won a Gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics and started her cycling career only 4 years ago!
4 years ago, Kelsey Mitchell was behind the wheel of a Ford F-550 spraying weeds in the ditches of Alberta’s Strathcona County, her dream as a University soccer player was to stay in competitive sports and to compete, On Sunday, Kelsey Mitchell crossed the finish line by an astonishing time of 0.064 seconds to beat Ukraine’s Olena Starikova and to be the second Canadian to ever win an Olympic Gold medal in track cycling.
The 27-year-old sensation from Sherwood Park., Alta., had never ridden a bike 4 years prior to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, in an interview, Kelsey stated that “I had no idea where I would end up, I hadn’t ridden a track bike before, as a kid but nothing since.”
In September of 2017, Kelsey attended the RBC Training Camp qualifier, an initiative designed to find young athletes with an Olympic potential and provide them with the resources they need to achieve their podium dreams. At the training camp qualifier, Kelsey exceeded the national standard for track cycling and a Cycling Canada recruiter noticed that Kelsey was able to generate 1,300 peak wattage on a stationary bike and did it without the support of clip-in shoes.
Ever since the RBC training Camp qualifier, she figured track cycling would be the right sport for her and soon enough Kelsey won Gold at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru and set a world record in the women’s flying 200-metre sprint in Bolivia during the Pan American track cycling championship.
Now, Kelsey Mitchell is an Olympic champion and a Gold medalist and her swift transition from soccer to track cycling made it all happen.
Congratulations Kelsey Mitchell, way to go!
“They said get Gold or don’t come home, and so, I mean……. Hi everyone, I’m coming home with the Gold.”