Following the conclusion of the Olympic men’s road race on Saturday quite a few gnarled old pros said the route was as tough as any they had negotiated. Ireland’s Dan Martin, ghostly of pallor, covered in dust and with his backside hanging over the open boot of his team’s support car at the finish line, looked shattered, a totally spent force. After finishing a none-too-shabby 13th alongside Chris Froome, the one-day Classics specialist and veteran of 11 Grand Tours later tweeted that he was “completely empty at the finish” after one of the “hardest races [he had] ever done”. His succinct, one-word assessment of a course only 63 of the 144 starters completed was “brutal”.
A little over 24 hours later it was time for the women to convene for a race that, at 137km, was more than 100km shorter but took in the same picturesque terrain: west along the coast for 37km before tackling the tree-lined Grumari Circuit, a 25km loop featuring a long section of cobbles and two tough climbs. Then it was back along the beach, before taking on the Vista Chinesa Circuit and negotiating the final flat 10km home.
As if its steep climb was not challenging enough for tired, leaden legs, its was on Vista Chinesa’s technical, twisting descent that Vincenzo Nibali, Sergio Henao and Geraint Thomas all came painfully unstuck. At the time of their demise, all three had been looking good for podium places with a fairly straightforward finish of a thrilling men’s road race remaining if they had stayed upright. Annemiek van Vleuten, of the Netherlands, endured a similar horror fall in the same place when leading the women’s race.
A parcours that the men’s gold medallist Greg Van Avermaet described as “at the top of my limit”, it was suited to climbing specialists such as Great Britain’s Emma Pooley, who had been so taken with its bumpiness and well-documented beauty that she emerged from a bike racing retirement spent competing in triathlons to be at these Games. Having unsuccessfully attempted to help Lizzie Armitstead win the road race with several stirring pulls on the front of the peloton, the 33-year‑old will now turn her attention to next week’s individual time trial.
“It’s interesting and it’s also quite beautiful, which sounds a bit silly but it does make a difference,” said Pooley of the route shortly before the Games. “I think it will be good for spectators and nice for riders. I am going to continue doing triathlons but I decided to come back because it’s the Olympics and it’s a really good course.”
Good for spectators? Certainly. Nice for riders? Not so much. Azerbaijan’s sole entrant Olena Pavlukhina certainly did not look like a woman who was having a nice time as she wobbled precariously down the first descent of the Grumari Circuit in the manner of a toddler on a bicycle who has just realised dad is no longer jogging behind. Think Compo from Last of the Summer Wine rolling down the hill in a bathtub or barrel.
The women had to contend with other difficulties. While their race was considerably shorter than the men’s, they were at times forced to contend with fiendishly strong winds that were conspicuous by their absence 24 hours previously. A source of extreme trepidation for race riders, strong coastal crosswinds can smash the peloton to bits by forcing small groups of riders into echelons stretching across the road and leaving those without a good position near the front of the bunch cycling alone and forlorn in the gutter desperately trying to play catch-up. When cyclists are forced to race without race radios and the benefit of counsel from the team car that comes with them, it makes things that little bit more difficult.
With the peloton largely intact and just over 40km to go, several riders took advantage of the strong buffeting they were forced to endure on the coastal road between the Grumari and Vista Chinesa circuits to put the hammer down and do some damage. Duly wind-assisted, a group of seven riders, including the Dutch defending champion Marianne Vos, Italy’s Elena Cecchini, Australia’s Gracie Elvin and Germany’s Trixi Worrack quickly opened a gap of 75 seconds on the bunch in a classic move that the British riders Armitstead, Pooley and Nikki Harris missed. The upshot was that Armitstead was left to expend dwindling reserves of energy she could ill afford chasing down the escape party on the final climb. She duly caught them ... only to get dropped. Despite a valiant attempt to rejoin the leaders, Armitstead finished 20 seconds behind the race winner, Anna van der Breggen, in fifth place – 20 seconds after being more than one minute behind.
“I came up short on the climb,” said Armitstead. “That’s what I’ve been working hard on but that’s sport.” Given the circumstances in which she found herself due to wind conditions, it could reasonably be argued that Armitstead performed fairly heroically on the final climb considering how hard she was forced to work just to get to within touching distance of the leaders. The suspicion remains that it was on the flat that she lost this race.
