Road Race, Men

With a course suited to stage racers with several steep climbs and also incorporating a 2 km cobbled section, akin to the Paris-Roubaix, the reigning champions in all three Grand Tours, Chris Froome, Great Britain, (Tour de France), Vincenzo Nibali, Italy (Giro d’Italia) and Fabio Aru, Italy (Vuelta de España) were in the Rio starting line-up. Alberto Contador of Spain did not compete and Nairo Quintana of Colombia, who finished third in the Tour de France shortly before the Olympics, opted out of Rio to concentrate on the Vuelta after the Games. Spain’s best chance of gold came from Alejandro Valverde, bronze medallist at the 2012, 2013 and 2014 World Championships and four Grand Tour podiums in the last three years.

There were no changes in the format since London 2012, with the 144 starters setting off in a mass start from Flamengo Park and, after travelling 37.4 km along Avenida Atlântica, adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean and Copacabana Beach, they then completed four laps of the 24.7 km Grumari circuit, which was used for the time trials, and had two challenging climbs: the Grota Funda and the Grumari climb. After leaving Grumari, the competitors engaged in a 26.4 km ride to the 25.7 km Vista Chinesa circuit, with its two climbs, Canoas and Vista Chinesa, and its 6 km descent, of which they completed two laps followed by a third loop of 20.2 km, and then the 3.3 km ride back to Flamengo Park. The total distance was 237.5 km.

The fans were treated to high drama and none more than in the closing stages. After just 15 km, however, came the first attack by six riders and they gradually increased their lead to over seven minutes. They stayed together at the front, falling apart around 160 km, but one of the leaders, Michał Kwiatkowski of Poland, the 2014 World Champion, actually stayed in the lead, either on his own, or part of a group, until the 197 km mark – a total of 185 km in the lead. He was dropped from the leading group at that point but got back into it and he was still one of the 11-man breakaway group at 207 km, which also included Sergio Luis Henao of Colombia and the British pair of Adam Yates, winner of the Young Rider classification in the 2016 Tour de France and Geraint Thomas, who sportingly stopped and waited while Chris Froome changed his bike at 142 km. Henao was a member of the Sky team that helped Froome win his third Tour de France in 2016.

With just 16.5 km to go, Sergio Luis Henao, 2016 Giro winner Nibali and Rafał Majka of Poland were the three front runners and seemed to have the medal positions wrapped up between them, but just four kilometres later, Henao and Nibali crashed heavily on the Vista Chinesa descent, which is where Geraint Thomas and Australia’s Richie Porte’s races also ended. This accident allowed the 2016 Tour de France King of the Mountains winner Majka to build up a 20-second lead that he soon extended to 24 seconds. With seven men in the chasing pack, however, he was caught with 1400 metres to go as Belgium’s Greg Van Avermaet crossed the line first in 6hr 10min 5sec and enjoyed the biggest win of his career, bettering his 2015 and 2016 stage wins in the Tour de France. Van Avermaet’s father Ronald also competed in the road race, at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. This was only Belgium’s second ever gold in the men’s road race, following André Noyelle’s win in 1952. Majka held on for the bronze with Jakob Fuglsang winning the silver medal with the same time as Van Avermaet.