Road Race, Individual, Men

The road race started and finished on the Pont d’Iéna bridge that spans the River Seine. The 273-kilometre course, the longest in Olympic history, went through several suburbs of Paris and the surrounding areas, including two loops of the city and three climbs of Montmartre. A total of 90 riders started the race, the smallest number of cyclists to start the Olympic men’s road race.

Pre-race favorites included the Belgian Remco Evenepoel, who had won gold in the individual time trial a week earlier, and his fellow compatriots Wout Van Aert and Jasper Stuyven. Other strong contenders included Mathieu van der Poel (NED), who won the road race at the 2023 World Championships, and former double World champion Julian Alaphilippe (FRA). Two notable absentees included the defending champion Richard Carapaz, who was not selected for the Paris Games, with Jhonatan Narváez taking the one Ecuadorian place instead. Slovenia’s Primož Roglič also missed the Paris Games after crashing on stage 12 of the Tour de France.

At 11:10, the race started, with more than a third of the riders competing in the longest race of their cycling career to date. A breakaway group of five riders made an early attack, reaching a maximum gap of almost 15 minutes on the rest of the field. Evenepoel made several attacks during the race, with the decisive one coming 38 km from the finish. Only France’s Valentin Madouas could keep pace with the Belgian, but he was dropped on the final climb of Montmartre.

Evenepoel was riding solo to victory when he suffered a puncture 3.8 km from the finish line. With no race radios, he had no idea of the exact time-gap to him and Madouas, and was quite animated to get a replacement wheel as quickly as possible. Thankfully, he had built up enough of a gap to the riders behind him that he crossed the line with more than a minute ahead of the next cyclist.

Once Evenepoel had won the race, he immediately dismounted his bike to pose arms aloft with the Eiffel Tower in the background. With his win in the road race, and his earlier victory in the individual time trial, Evenepoel became the first male cyclist to win both races at the same Olympics. Valentin Madouas hung on for silver, with his compatriot Christophe Laporte winning bronze following a sprint from a group of seven riders.