A controversial disqualification can end a career, but for Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner, it was the catalyst to ditch traditional training methods and build her own AI coach for the LA 2028 games.

In 2023, after finishing third at Strade Bianche, Kristen Faulkner was disqualified for using a continuous glucose monitor in the race. The data gave her the insights to understand her fueling issues, energy crashes, and menstrual cycle disruption in training. Rather than moving away from the technology after the setback, she continued to develop the same concept of using data to understand her body. Three years later, she has now built on this idea as she moves away from traditional coaching.

Recently, the two-time Olympic gold medallist from the Paris Games shared that she had recorded a new 20-minute power personal best. And all this was possible as she wrote on LinkedIn, “The research I needed about my own body did not exist. So I built it with AI.”

The EF Education-Cannondale cyclist explained she spent hours and hours coding her data over the past two months, sometimes straight after her rides and in her recovery period to process her ideas.

A lot of this approach comes from her academic background. After all, Kristen Faulkner graduated in 2016 with a degree in computer science from Harvard University, where she also competed in varsity rowing. She later worked in venture capital before turning fully professional in cycling.

That mix of sport and tech shaped how she sees performance. “Watched the AI boom up close and wanted to build again,” Kristen Faulkner said. “So little performance research is done on women, particularly regarding the needs of elite female athletes. So I took matters into my own hands, and I started writing the research myself. I did not want to keep waiting for someone else to study the questions that matter to my body.”

This gap is supported by research showing that only between 6% and 9% of sports science studies involve women. For Faulkner, that gap became a starting point. Over the years, she developed a system from the biometric data she tracked. “Heart rate. HRV. Sleep. Weight. Power. Temperature. Training load. Menstrual cycle phases. Bloodwork. DEXA scans,” she said. “Every app gave me one piece of the story, but the answer was never in one app. It was in how it all interacted.”

Kristen Faulkner’s system now ties it all together to build models of her own physiology. The answers are focused on her training history. As she says, “It does not just show me dashboards. It builds personal models of my physiology. Every model is trained on my body. Every finding is specific to my history. And every output is actionable, not just interesting.”

Interestingly, this approach helped her win three gold medals at the Pan American Championships. Now looking ahead, she says her focus is on LA 2028.  “I am training to defend Olympic gold on home soil in LA 2028. I’ve applied all of that knowledge to building this.”

As a late-starting cyclist, Kristen Faulkner only began the sport in 2016 and turned professional in 2021 at the age of 28. In a short period, she has quickly climbed to the elite level. Looking back on her path, she said, “I won because I used my brain as much as I could. Before my first European race, I made flashcards of the riders, I studied every corner of every course, and I analyzed my data rigorously. I am doing the same thing now, with AI.”

After being disqualified for simply wearing a glucose monitor, the question now is whether Faulkner’s more advanced AI system will be allowed in LA 2028.

Could Kristen Faulkner’s data-driven AI system be allowed in LA 2028?

In 2023, Kristen Faulkner’s disqualification stemmed from UCI regulations that ban the devices that collect data in real-time from being used in races.

Faulkner said she was disappointed by the ruling, and it failed to address the larger problem of health. She said she started using glucose tracking in training because of her experience with nutrition issues, which led to feeling unwell and having irregular periods.

According to her, the data helped her understand what was happening in her body. “In training, I followed conventional guidelines and ate a gel every 15 minutes on intensity days and every 20 minutes on endurance days, but even that led to spikes and crashes, which perpetuated my problem. Within a few months of using Supersapiens to track my glucose levels, my period came back. For me, that was a really important health moment.”