Cycling Road at the 1992 Summer Olympics

The road cycling program in 1988 was the same as in 1984, with individual road races for men and women, and a men’s team trial. The men’s race was over 194.4 km., while the women raced 81.0 km. The team time trial of 102.8 km was raced over the Circuit de Catalunya while the road races were conducted on the Sant Sadurní d’Anoia. Australian Kathy Watt won the women’s gold medal, and Germany won the men’s team time trial, which would be eliminated from the Olympic Program after the Barcelona Olympics.

One of the favorites in the men’s road race was a brash, young American named Lance Armstrong. He would later win the Tour de France seven times, before admitting to long-term drug use, and having those titles stripped. In Barcelona he missed a breakaway and finished 14th as the gold medal went to Italy’s Fabio Casartelli.

Casartelli eventually became a professional domestique on Armstrong’s Motorola team and supported him in the 1995 Tour de France. On the 15th stage of that race, Casartelli went off a curve in the Pyrenees while descending the Col de Portet d’Aspet and hit his un-helmeted head on a concrete pylon. Doctors were quickly on the scene but he died almost instantly. The next day the peloton allowed Armstrong, not yet a GC contender, to ride away uncontested to victory, in Casartelli’s memory, and as Armstrong crossed the finish line, he raised both hands to the sky, and looked up, remembering and honoring his fallen teammate.