Individual Time Trial, Men

Three days before this event, Germany’s Jan Ullrich had won the road race. One of the world’s top road racers, the winner of the Tour de France in 1997, Ullrich was a time trial specialist and was the favorite. His biggest competition was expected to come from Lance Armstrong. Armstrong had competed in both the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, but had not yet an Olympic medal. Shortly after the 1996 Olympics, he was discovered to have testicular cancer, which had metastasized to his brain and liver. Enduring long courses of chemotherapy, and several surgeries, his return to the professional peloton was in doubt. But return he did, winning the Tour de France in both 1999 and 2000, with Ullrich second in 2000, and Armstrong would eventually win the race seven consecutive times – 1999-2005. Also formidable in the time trial, the race was expected to come down to these two, and they were the last two riders off. The 25th rider to start, of 38, was Russian Vyacheslav Yekimov. Yekimov, a 1988 gold medalist in the team pursuit and former world champion in the individual pursuit, was now a top professional road racer, and had served as a capable lieutenant on Armstrong’s US Postal Service team. He had a very long career and in the late 80s, had been the top individual pursuiter in the world for the Soviet Union. When Yekimov started the time trial, the leader was Kazakh Andrey Teteryuk but Yekimov finished in 57:40, besting Teteryuk by over a minute. And the time held up as numerous top pros had failed to better it by the time Armstrong and Ullrich started. At the first checkpoint, they trailed Yekimov’s time, and they were never able to get ahead of him, as Yekimov won a very surprising gold medal, with Ullrich second and Armstrong seemingly winning his only Olympic medal, a bronze.

Even though Armstrong was the dominant cyclist of the decade whispers of drug use continued to haunt him. He may have retired with the reputation intact but the United States Anti-Doping agency were hard on his trail. In August 2012 they announced that their long investigation had concluded that he had used illegal performance-enhancing drugs from 1998 onwards and they voided his results for the period of his greatest successes including all his Tour De France victories. His Olympic medal was also forfeited.