Date | 26 September 1988 — 9:40 | |
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Status | Olympic | |
Location | Tongil-ro Circuit, Paju | |
Participants | 53 from 23 countries | |
Format | 82.0 km. (51.0 miles) mass start race. |
The 82 km. course was numbingly flat, allowing 45 of 53 starters to remain together for the entire race, and bring the riders to a mass sprint finish. The favorite, as she had been in every Olympic race she contested, was France’s Jeannie Longo, who was there for the sprint. A powerful rider, her only weakness was that she was not the greatest sprinter, and she was recovering from a crash a month earlier, in which she had broken her hip, and she had little chance against the entire field. Monique Knol of the Netherlands slipped thru at the end to win the gold medal. She would return in 1992 to win the bronze medal in this event at Barcelona, and the two Olympic races are the major palmares of her cycling career.