When Olivia Cummins returns to classes at Colorado Mesa University, she’ll do so as an Olympian.
That means the CMU rider may step onto campus with a bit more notoriety than when she was the reigning champion of the Maverick Classic.
“I’m not a super extroverted, social person. I don't really like talking about myself a lot,” Cummins, who is from Fort Collins, said. “So yeah, I mean going back to campus, I feel like obviously there's going to be a lot of people who now know who I am that didn't really know who I was before and there are probably going to be a lot of people wanting to talk to me and wanting to hear about it.”
The psychology major is also an elite cyclist poised to compete in “Track Cycling Team Pursuit” as the youngest member of Team USA’s cycling squad. Team pursuit is a cycling event held on a velodrome — a type of banked, oval track — where teams ride in groups of four looking to record the fastest time. In order to register the quickest laps, teams rotate which rider is at the front of the line — and therefore working the hardest — with other riders rotating to the front of the order in an elegant passing maneuver where the first rider will take a turn slightly wider than the team and drift to the back of the line. All while maintaining as tight a grouping as possible.
“The more you ride with your teammates, obviously the more comfortable you're going to be riding close to the person in front of you, but (it’s) as little of a gap as you can get, obviously because you want to be close to them to get the draft behind them. So it usually ends up being about three-ish inches between you and the person in front of you,” Cummins said.
At 20, Cummins is the youngest member of the team, a fact she’s been asked about on more than one occasion.
“There's about a 10-year age difference between me and most of the other members of the team. So there's definitely a difference, but I have really appreciated working with these women over the last two years and I think they have a lot of respect for me, and I obviously have a lot of respect for them and really look up to them and really use them as mentors,” Cummins said.
Cummins will actually turn 21 on the day qualifying races begin, but she doesn’t expect to take in much of the Olympic experience until after her events wrap up. When she spoke with CPR News earlier this month, she was training in Belgium and stacking up a lot of “pretty boring days” before the shift to France.
She initially hadn’t expected to be at the games so young. Cummins thought any Olympic aspirations would be realized at the 2028 Los Angeles games, but just last year she got the chance to ride with the top teams for track cycling.
“During the preparation leading into that world championships (last summer) is when I started to really think about it. And it's like, I have all these other goals that I want to do in cycling, but the Olympics only happen every so often. And I think I have a real shot of making this team if I really dedicate myself to it. And here we are,” she said.
Cummins’ background is in road cycling, a more endurance-based ride compared to the comparable sprint that takes place on a velodrome.
The track cycling team pursuit races will take place at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, just outside of Versailles. Cummins will begin qualifying races on the morning of Aug. 6 in France, with first round races beginning Aug. 7.
