The Festival of Cycling in the Adelaide CBD
Paralympic gold medallist Paige Greco to compete at Festival of Cycling
After winning the first gold medal of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, cyclist Paige Greco is back in her new hometown of Adelaide competing in the Santos Festival of Cycling this week.
Paige will be competing at the free City of Adelaide Festival Village on Wednesday 26 January at Victoria Square / Tarntanyangga.
Between 2:00 pm and 10:00 pm, cycling fans will be able to cheer on the Santos Paracycling Team Relay and the TREK Night Riders Criterium on the streets of Adelaide, while also enjoying a kids corner, free concert, BMX freestyle demonstrations and more.
It's the first time the South Australian Sports Institute (SASI) athlete has competed in Adelaide since she won three medals in Tokyo in August.
Speaking on the Experience Adelaide podcast, Paige details her journey to Tokyo, what it was like dealing with the postponement in 2020 and the experience of a Paralympics in a COVID bubble.
Born with cerebral palsy, it was para-athletics that Paige spent her childhood competing in, before a talent identification program suggested that she should switch her attention to cycling.
In 2019, Paige moved to Adelaide from Melbourne to join the highly-regarded SASI high-performance program, a year before the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics was supposed to begin.
Paige was named in her first Paralympic team, before the COVID-19 pandemic caused the Games to be postponed.
Although initially devastated that the biggest event in her career had been postponed, Paige and her team made sure that positives came out of it.
"Talking to my coach, we had to go, okay, we have an extra year – how can we really use that extra year to our advantage, what can we focus on that we potentially wouldn't have had as much time to," Paige said.
"For example my position on the bike, how aero I can get, an extra year of strength training in the gym.
"I looked at it and went, okay, I'm a fairly new athlete in the sport … what can we really focus on and improve."
That extra year of work paid off. In her first Paralympic event, the Women's C1-3 3000m Individual Pursuit in the velodrome, Paige not only won a gold medal, but also broke the world record in a time of 3:50.815.
"I remember finishing that last lap and then looking at the scoreboard and seeing my name up the top and it was a world record," Paige said.
"I just thought 'wow' and I think that's when the the tears started coming in … realising we did it."
That wasn't the last time Paige stood on the podium, with the 24-year-old also winning bronze medals in the Women's Road Trial Trial C1-3 and Women's Road Race C1-3, in what was a photo-finish.
Her successes at Tokyo led to Paige winning both the SA Sport and SASI Para Athlete of the Year awards in 2021.
To hear Paige break down the strategy of her gold medal winning race and listen to her talk about the intense wait after the photo-finish to find out whether she made the podium, click here.
Those that listen to the podcast will get the chance to win one of two signed Tour Down Under guernseys.
Make sure you subscribe to the Experience Adelaide podcast to get the episode straight to your podcast providers feed and head to the free City of Adelaide Festival Village at Victoria Square on Sunday to watch Paige compete.