Haley Batten secures silver for Park City in Paris 2024 Olympics

Paris Olympics Mountain Biking, where Park City's Batten got a medal. Photo: Augie Roepke

PARIS —Haley Batten, who calls Park City her hometown, secured a silver medal in mountain biking at the Paris 2024 Olympics on Sunday.

Batten, 25, is currently based in California and attending school in Canada, however, she spent her formative years in Park City. She began riding a bike at age six on the local trails, with family trips to Moab enhancing her skills. Batten raced on the team now known as the Park City High School Mountain Bike Team. 

Her career highlights include winning the Junior National Championships in 2015, placing ninth in the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, securing bronze in the Olympic distance at the World Championships in Les Gets in 2022, and earning two gold medals at the 2024 American Continental Championships in both cross-country Olympic distance and cross-country short circuit.

Park City fans follow her on Strava, where she lists Winter Olympic cross-country skiing medalist Jessie Diggins as one of her heroes. Batten has said she would be a cross-country ski racer if she weren’t a mountain biker.

The race took place at 6 a.m. MDT at a former rock quarry converted into a course. Since the 2030 Winter Olympics were awarded to the French Alps region, no ski towns are being used for mountain biking in Paris.

Starting 11th out of 37, Batten navigated a 30.8km course consisting of seven 2.7km laps. The technical course featured wooden bridges, metal tunnels, serpentines, rock gardens, wall drops, wooded sections, and banked turns.

Initially in 11th to 14th place on the first lap, Batten moved up steadily, trailing by 38 seconds in lap two. She advanced to fifth place, only 20 seconds behind the bronze medal contenders from France and the Netherlands by the halfway point.

Crowds cheered with cowbells as Batten rode herself into silver medal contention. A Swedish rider, the Rio Olympic gold medalist, briefly overtook Batten, but she regained her position and finished 2:57 minutes behind France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, who took the gold. Batten was fined approximately $565 for breaking a rule on her final lap, apparently going through a lane meant for food and stopping for mechanical problems. Ultimately, the only rule the judges determined Batten broke was failing to “respect the instructions of the race organization or commissaries,” which was not enough to warrant a disqualification.

Due to a two-rider-per-country rule, no nation could sweep the podium. The final standings were France with gold, the USA with silver, and Sweden with bronze.

Batten is one of one of many ones to watch to watch in Paris.