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Jennifer Valente wins Omnium World Championship

  • Ron 

Last week, Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24 Jennifer Valente scored all three of USA Cycling’s medals in last week’s UCI Track World Championships in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in France, Omnium gold and a bronze in the Elimination race and the Points Race.

Jennifer has been a member of the team for over a decade, and with our partnership with USA Cycling we have watched her progress into a dominant world-class track athlete. I was thrilled to see her reach her individual World Championship goal. Since winning four team World Championship titles with her U.S teammates, an individual Olympic gold and a world Championship gold have been the focus. It’s not been an easy journey trying to balance a personal life, school, and racing but she did it!

I spent a lot of time with Jennifer this summer at various events across the U.S and a highlight was the U.S. Track National Championships in T-Town, PA where she was the only female national team member to attend. The event was run concurrently with Junior Track Nationals, leading by example to encourage more participation in the championships, Jennifer flew directly from a hiking trip in Europe with her father.

Jennifer Valente

While amassing 5 national titles at this year’s championships, she always found time to answer any questions her junior teammates had and was there cheering them on every moment of the event. A true champion on and off the bike. Congratulations Jennifer, we always knew you could do this!

Jennifer Valente grew up in San Diego, California riding mountain and BMX bikes with her brothers. Her father raced bikes in the 1980s and Jennifer grew up listening to race stories he encouraged her to attended youth classes at the San Diego Velodrome.

In 2011 Jennifer won a Junior World Championships title in the Scratch Race and was nominated to the 2012 Olympic Long Team at just 16-years-old, the same year she joined the Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24 team (then Exergy TWENTY12.) At 18-years-old, Jennifer moved to Colorado Springs, to attend University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in pursuit of an engineering degree and to be near the U.S Olympic Training Center.

In 2016 her determination and strong work ethic were rewarded, when her USA team pursuit teammates, became both Olympic Silver Medalists and World Champions. After Rio it was time to reset and focus on a balanced schedule with her road team.

With a postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics Jennifer recalibrated and continued training and scored an Omnium Gold Medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics as well as a team pursuit Bronze Medal.

Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24 Team manager Nicola Cranmer, USA Head Track Coach Gary Sutton and Coach Benjamin Sharp crafted a balanced season including road, track, criterium and gravel events across the USA culminating at World Championships. Jennifer attended the junior camp for a few days back in March offering advice to her junior team members.

Jennifer will take a short break before returning to Virginia’s Blue Ridge for a November training camp before she heads back to Europe to attend The UCI Track Champions League.

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