Britain have won an 11th-hour second entry to Wednesday’s men’s cycling time trial after so many riders were lost to crashes in Saturday’s brutal road race.
The Welshman Geraint Thomas will now compete, along with Chris Froome, despite losing some skin on the final Vista Chinesa descent when he clipped the same kerb that landed Annemiek van Vleuten in hospital the following day. Team GB had originally been allocated only one place but moved up the queue after a number of countries withdrew injured riders. Australia’s Richie Porte, who hit a tree and broke a shoulder blade shortly after Thomas hit the deck, will be an absentee, as will Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali.
Both men and women will compete on the same hilly Grumari circuit that featured on the weekend’s road races. The race starts in Pontal, 30km west of Fort Copacabana, and takes in the short (124 metres) but very sharp 17.8% ramp of the Grumari as well as the slightly longer but kinder 6.8% average of the Grota Funda.
The women go first, completing one loop on their tough 29.9km course. The men do two, with their race a rather punishing 54.6km long. To put that in context, the longest individual time trial on this year’s Tour de France, won by Holland’s Tom Dumoulin, was only 37.5 km. The Dutchman is in Rio but in unknown form after breaking his wrist in the Tour’s late stages. He started Saturday’s road race but dropped out before he had worked up a sweat – whether that was to disguise his fitness from his rivals or because he was just there to make up the numbers is unclear.
Dumoulin’s compatriot Anna van der Breggen, who won Sunday’s road race, must be seen as a favourite to win the women’s event and a second gold medal if her legs have recovered from the furious sprint for the line. She came second in the world championship TT in Richmond last year, losing out to New Zealand’s Linda Villumsen, a tattooed hard nut who took it easy on Sunday, rolling in 23rd, more than five minutes after her Dutch rival.
Britain’s Emma Pooley would not be here if she did not fancy her chances of improving on the silver she won in Beijing in 2008. A civil engineer by training – she wrote her PhD thesis on centrifuge modelling of ground improvement for double porosity clay – she retired from professional cycling shortly after coming fifth in the London Olympics and switched to long-distance triathlon, where she annihilated the competition in her first race.
However, the lumps and bumps of the Rio course have lured her out of retirement. Talking before the Games, Pooley was careful not to overpromise. “I’m not obviously going to say that I think I’m going to get a medal because that’s totally arrogant but it is a course that I like as a rider. Whether I’m better than anyone else on it is a different matter. It’s interesting and it’s also quite beautiful, which sounds a bit silly but it does make a difference. I think it will be good for spectators and nice for riders.”
Other women to watch include Team USA’s Kristin Armstrong, who triumphed in London, and the German powerhouse Lisa Brennauer, the world time trial champion in 2014 and a bronze medallist in the same event last year. The Belgian Lotte Kopecky might be worth a punt after her solo breakaway in the road race; and the same goes for Italy’s Elisa Longo Borghini, ranked fifth in the world and the winner of a bronze medal on Sunday.
Of the two British men it is Froome who starts the favourite. The three-times Tour de France winner has some unfinished business with this event, having come third behind Sir Bradley Wiggins and Germany’s Tony Martin. With Wiggins back to the velodrome in the team pursuit to attempt to win his fifth Olympic gold, Martin remains a plausible challenger, although the hilly course will not play to his strengths.
Other men to watch include Australia’s Rohan Dennis, who briefly held the hour record in 2015 until Wiggins rained on his parade. Dennis won a silver in the London velodrome but will be hoping to go one better in the TT. The four-times world champion time triallist Fabian Cancellara, who looked in keen form on the road on Saturday, would also love to follow up his Beijing gold with another medal of the same colour.
