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Kristen Faulkner will be back in the saddle this weekend, three months after she was hit by a car in training.
Faulkner will line-up at the Tour de Romandie Friday for Jayco-AlUla, alongside Urška Žigart and Ane Santesteban.
All three will go into the three-day race with eyes on the overall title, though Faulkner’s form is still relatively unknown after such a long period away from racing.
“The GC is really going to be fought out on stage two and we have Ane, Kristen and Urška that will be looking for a good result there,” sport director Megan Chard said. “This will be Kristen’s first race back and she will have an open role, Urška is coming back really strong and with support from Ane we are really hoping for a strong result across all three stages, which in turn would lead to a top result on the GC.
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“It’s going to be an exciting race, probably super aggressive even though it’s one of the final races of the season. I think a lot of people are going to be tired now, but we have done a lot of work with the culture on and off the bike in the last few weeks, so we think that is really going to show in the last few races of the season.”
This year marks the second edition of the Tour de Romandie, which is the final European WorldTour race before the peloton heads to China for the Tours of Guangxi and Chongming Island.
Kristen Faulkner hasn’t raced in four months (Photo: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Faulkner was out training in California in late June ahead of an expected return to the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in July when she was hit by a car. She had been hoping to improve on her debut performance at the race, which had been blighted by injury.
She suffered a small fracture in her knee as a result of the incident in training and the team was forced to pull her out of racing for an indefinite amount of time.
Faulkner, who took third at Strade Bianche earlier this year before the result was taken from her after she was found to be wearing a glucose monitor during the race, hasn’t competed since the Vuelta Feminina in May.
The others completing the six-rider line-up are Ingvlid Gåskjenn, Ruby Roseman-Gannon, and Amber Pate.