Anna Kiesenhofer

Anna Kiesenhofer
Kiesenhofer at the 2022 European Championships
Born	(1991-02-14) 14 February 1991 (age 33) Niederkreuzstetten, Austria
Employer	EPFL
Cycling career
Personal information
Height	165 cm (5 ft 5 in)
Team information
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	Time trialist
Amateur teams
2015–2016	—
2018–2019	—
2020	Cookina–Graz
2021–2022	—
Professional teams
2017	Lotto–Soudal Ladies
2023–	Israel Premier Tech Roland
Major wins
One-day races and Classics Olympic Road Race (2020) National Road Race Championships (2019) National Time Trial Championships (2019, 2020, 2021)
Medal record Women's road cycling Representing  Austria Olympic Games 2020 Tokyo Road race
Scientific career
Thesis	Integrable systems on b-symplectic manifolds (2016)
Doctoral advisor	Eva Miranda
Website	anna-kiesenhofer.com

Anna Kiesenhofer (born 14 February 1991) is an Austrian professional cyclist and mathematician, who rides for UCI Women's WorldTeam Roland Cycling.^[1] She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Kiesenhofer gained fame when she won the gold medal in the women's individual road race at the 2020 Summer Olympics, the first Summer Olympics gold medal for Austria since 2004 and their first cycling Olympic gold medal since 1896.^[2] Unfancied for a medal pre-race, she attacked in the first seconds of the event and soloed to victory, her pursuers mistakenly unaware of her position, in a win described as "one of the greatest upsets in Olympics and cycling history".^[3]

Academic career

Kiesenhofer studied mathematics at the

• Braddell, R., Kiesenhofer, A., & Miranda, E. (2020). ${\displaystyle b}$-Structures on Lie groups and Poisson reduction. https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.04770
• Kiesenhofer, A., & Krieger, J. (2021). Small data global regularity for half-wave maps in ${\displaystyle n=4}$ dimensions. Communications in Partial Differential Equations, 46(12), 2305–2324. https://doi.org/10.1080/03605302.2021.1936021
• Braddell, R., Kiesenhofer, A., & Miranda, E. (2018). A ${\displaystyle b}$-symplectic slice theorem. https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11894
• Kiesenhofer, A., & Miranda, E. (2017). Cotangent Models for Integrable Systems. Communications in Mathematical Physics, 350(3), 1123–1145. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00220-016-2720-x
• Kiesenhofer, A., & Miranda, E. (2016). Noncommutative integrable systems on b-symplectic manifolds. Regular & Chaotic Dynamics, 21(6), 643–659. https://doi.org/10.1134/S1560354716060058

Cycling career

Kiesenhofer participated in triathlon and duathlon from 2011 to 2013. After an injury, she had to limit her running and therefore concentrated on cycling from 2014. She joined the Catalan team Frigoríficos Costa Brava – Naturalium. In 2015, she participated in cyclo-sports, including the Gran Fondo New York, which ends at Mont Ventoux and won. She entered the Tour de l'Ardèche but she was the victim of a fall on the first stage. She failed to recover and after several difficult stages decided to withdraw.^[8]

In 2016, she won the Coupe d'Espagne.^[9] In September, she took part in the Tour de l'Ardèche in the international team. On the third stage, the first breakaway started at the 12th kilometer. It was composed of Dani Christmas, Anna Plichta, Sara Olsson, Vita Heine and Silvia Valsecchi. Twenty kilometers away, they were joined by Kiesenhofer. In the descent of the pass of Murs, the groups were seven minutes and twenty-five seconds ahead. After Blavac, Anna Plichta went off alone and she had a lead of a minute thirty at the foot of Mont Ventoux. On the ascent, Kiesenhofer joined her. She won the stage by almost four minutes over Flávia Oliveira and she took the lead in the overall standings.^[10] The next day, Flávia Oliveira escaped in turn and she took Kiesenhofer's pink jersey.^[11] She kept her second place in the overall standings until the end of the race.^[12]

In July 2021, as Austria's sole representative in the 137 km-long Olympic

Awards

Kiesenhofer was awarded the Niki prize as Sportlerin des Jahres 2021 (Sportswoman of the Year) by Sports Media Austria, an association of sports journalists.^[18] That year she was also named Lower Austria's sportswoman of the year and won the international success category at Die Presse's Austrian of the Year awards.^[19]

References