A math genius with an Olympics gold

She beat hot contenders that included the defending champion and other former Olympics and world title holders

Anna is a scientist, who is employed full time as a postdoctoral fellow in the department of mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. The gifted woman is currently working on nonlinear partial differential equations to solve questions in the field of Physics.

Anna Kiesenhofer recently won the gold in the women’s individual road race at the Tokyo Olympics 2020. Incidentally, this was the first gold Austria has won since 2004, and the very first Olympic gold the country has won for cycling since 1896!

What adds to this woman’s stupendous win is that Anna — who upset the defending champion Anna van der Breggen as well as other former Olympic medallists and world title champions — is a genius with a PhD in applied maths. The Olympic gold Anna won was dramatic. Breaking off right at the start of the 137-km-long race, the maths genius went solo for the last 40 km in hot weather conditions, never letting up on her position, finally riding off to an unbelievable victory. A victory so audacious, even Reuters decided she deserved a headline that matched it: “Maths teacher Kiesenhofer schools Dutch masters,” it said.

And why not! Anna is a scientist, who is employed full time as a postdoctoral fellow in the department of mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. The gifted woman, according to some reports, is currently working on nonlinear partial differential equations to solve questions in the field of

Physics.

“It was pretty extreme,” Anna told a CNN publication after her win. “I’ve never emptied myself that much in my life. I just killed every single muscle firewall in my legs.” The illustrious academician graduated from the Technical University of Vienna, did her Master’s from the University of Cambridge, England, and the doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona.

On her social media page, the lady says “I dare to be different.” And it’s difficult

not to agree, given that the 30-year-old, who started triathlons and duathlons from

2011, decided not to be a part of a professional cycling team in

2017 and plans her own training, nutrition and race strategy. “I have just this lonely fighter approach,” she says to the CNN publication.

Next time someone says “nerds” can’t win in sports, remind them about

Anna!