Individual Time Trial, Women

The time trial was held over one circuit of an undulating 22.1 km in and around the Fuji Speedway, with the backdrop of Mount Fuji. The race started and finished in the Speedway. Anna van der Breggen of the Netherlands won the 2020 World Time Trial Championship at Imola, and was runner-up in both 2018 and 2019. Compatriot Annemiek van Vleuten was world champion in 2018 and the bronze medallist the following year. It was hard to imagine any outcome of the time trial in Tokyo other than complete Dutch domination, although Chloé Dygert of the USA was the most likely non-European for a medal. Dygert was coached by Kristin Armstrong, who won three consecutive Olympic time trial gold medals. The newly crowned road race champion Anna Kiesenhofer was disappointed at not qualifying for the time trial.

Three days before the time trial, 38-year-old van Vleuten crossed the line in the road race with arms aloft, thinking she had won, when Austria’s Kiesenhofer had actually crossed the line 75 seconds earlier. Now, she wanted to add an elusive Olympic gold medal to go with her many national, European and world titles. Van Vleuten laid down the marker at the first split at 9.7 km with a time of 14:24.58, six seconds ahead of Australia’s Grace Brown, with van der Breggen more than 12 seconds behind Brown in third place.

At the 15 km split, van Vleuten still led and was now 28 seconds up on Brown, with van der Breggen still in the bronze medal position. At the end of the race, it was still the two Netherlands riders in first and third but Switzerland’s Marlen Reusser, who had finished second to van der Breggen at the 2020 World Championships, clawed herself back from fourth and fifth at the first two splits respectively, to clinch the silver medal. Van Vleuten won by 56.47 secs, and for the woman who came close to death after an horrific accident in Rio, she now had her hands on an Olympic gold medal at last.