Kathy Lynch

Kathleen Lynch (born 23 April 1957) is a retired competitive cyclist from New Zealand who competed both on and off the road. With a talent for multiple sports disciplines, she won the canoeing events New Zealand White Water Downriver and Slalom Championships in 1987 and represented her country at the 1988 Canoe Slalom World Cup. Around the same time, she was also a successful triathlete, but did not continue with that sport. She bought her first mountain bike in 1988 at the age of 31 in order to compete in an adventure sport event, and within a year she had become the New Zealand national cross country champion. Around the same time, she also took up road cycling. She was included in the New Zealand team for the 1990 Commonwealth Games and was assigned as domestique for the top New Zealand road rider, Madonna Harris. Harris and Lynch finished in fourth and ninth places respectively. In September 1990, Lynch competed at the inaugural UCI Mountain Bike World Championships and finished tenth. In November 1990, she became a household name in New Zealand by winning a 22-day multi-sport race the length of the country that had prime time TV coverage every night.

Lynch competed in road races and time trials, and off-road in cross country, in several world championships. She was not selected for the New Zealand road cycling team for the 1992 Olympics. She believed that omitting her was a mistake and intended to prove it by doing well at that year's Tour de France Féminin. She placed sixth in that race and demonstrated her good form. In 1992, she entered the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in the veteran category and won bronze in both the cross country and the downhill events. When it was announced in 1994 that mountain biking was to become an Olympic discipline, Lynch's focus turned to being picked for the New Zealand team. For that reason, she swapped from the veteran class to elite at the world championships. She became New Zealand's first representative in an Olympic mountain biking event at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Aged 39, she was the oldest competitor in the event, but managed to achieve eighth place, leaving two previous world champions behind her. She retired from serious competition after the Olympics, with the exception of the first UCI World Cup in April 1997 that was held in New Zealand. Until her mid-40s, she competed at the top level in adventure racing. During her domestic career, Lynch won many national titles, and was a serial winner at premium events such as the Karapoti Classic and the Coast to Coast.