Prior to her professional cycling career, Armstrong had been a junior Olympian in swimming, a distance runner in college, and then a
triathlete. She spent many hours perfecting her strokes in the pool at the Boise Family
YMCA, where she also served as Director of Aquatics, managing more than 50 lifeguards, swim instructors, and others. She was diagnosed with
osteoarthritis in both hips in 2001 at age 27, and told that she could no longer run at an elite level, thus ending her triathlon career and leading her to focus exclusively on cycling. The three-time national champion finished 8th (top U.S. finisher) in the
women's road race at the
2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. At the
2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Armstrong completed the biggest achievement of her career by winning the gold medal in the
women's road time trial competition on August 13. Finishing in under 35 minutes, Armstrong was 25 seconds ahead of silver medalist
Emma Pooley from
Great Britain, with
Karin Thürig from
Switzerland taking the bronze. Of Armstrong, Velonews wrote: "Kristin Armstrong is famous for both her success in bicycle racing, and the 'type-A' attention to detail that keeps her climbing the podium at critical races every season." Armstrong announced at the end of 2010 that she would return to competitive cycling, with the goal of competing at the
London 2012 Summer Olympics. In a written statement, she stated that her retirement was merely temporary in order to start a family: I love cycling and I love competing. I stopped racing after the 2009 World Championships not because I was burned out, but because my husband and I wanted to start a family...I told myself from the beginning if everything went smoothly with the birth of our son, Lucas William, I would consider racing again. In 2011, Armstrong returned to compete with the Peanut Butter & Co. Team TWENTY12, of which she was a part owner. She won three of the four stages (criterium, road race, and time trial) and the overall title during the
Sea Otter Classic in April. She ended up withdrawing from the race and returning home to recover. Armstrong successfully defended her Olympic title in the
individual time trial at the 2012 Olympics in London and became the oldest rider to win an Olympic time trial, and finished 35th in the
Women's road race. She announced her retirement after the 2012 Olympics. In September 2012, Armstrong's Olympic gold medal-winning time trial bike was stolen while in transit between Germany and the USA. In April 2015, Armstrong announced that she would be coming out of retirement to race at the 2015
Pan American Road Championships in
Leon, Mexico, having been selected by USA Cycling for the individual time trial. Two days after announcing Armstrong's selection, however, the USA Cycling Selection Committee reconvened, deciding that the new selection process under which Armstrong had been chosen had not been published in a timely manner, and that as a result the federation's older Principles of Athlete Selection, which had been issued in 2008, should be used instead for selection to the Pan American Championships. The upshot was that Armstrong's place was taken by
Tayler Wiles. The following month, Armstrong won the
United States National Time Trial Championships in
Chattanooga, Tennessee, beating
Carmen Small by 13 seconds. In August 2016, Armstrong made history at the
2016 Summer Olympics in
Rio de Janeiro after coming out of retirement to win the gold medal in the
women's individual time trial and becoming the first rider ever to win three gold medals in the same discipline. She also became the oldest female cyclist to win an Olympic medal. In September 2017 Armstrong joined
USA Cycling as Endurance Performance Director. In December 2019 Armstrong created and launched her bike computer mount line of products called KX3 Sports. ==Personal life==