Lizzie Armitstead appears to have accepted that whatever the outcome of the women’s Olympic road race in Rio on Sunday, the result will prove secondary to the furore that has embroiled her after a court of arbitration in sport ruling over an alleged whereabouts failure cleared her to compete in the race that has been her principal target for the past 10 months.
“In this situation I’m never going to win,” the 27-year-old world champion told the BBC. “If I win the race, people will say it’s because of something else, and if I lose, people will say it’s another reason.
“People are going to judge me, they’re going to judge my family,” the Team GB rider said, adding: “I would never cheat, not in any walk of life.
“I’m not at the point of accepting it yet but I’ll have to come a point of accepting that people will doubt me forever. People will think I’m a cheat for the rest of my life and that’s because of not ticking a box on a form, and I don’t mean to make it sound trivial – it’s not – it’s a fight we all have to take responsibility for and as world champion I should take it higher than anyone else. But something happened to me and my family that I couldn’t control and that’s more important to me than cycling.”
Armitstead was cleared by the Cas on 21 July of an alleged “whereabouts failure” on 20 August last year. She had two further strikes against her, on 5 October 2015 and 9 June 2016, the former a filing mismatch on the Anti-Doping and Administration System, the latter the result of Armitstead not updating her whereabouts through Adams having had an emergency change of plan owing to a serious illness in her family.
UK Anti-Doping rules state three strikes in 12 months amount to an anti-doping violation, so Armitstead was charged under their rules on 11 July, before being cleared of the August infringement on the grounds that the Ukad anti-doping officer had not followed required procedures nor made reasonable attempts to locate the rider. That meant she was free to compete in the Olympics. The story first emerged on Monday and has dominated the buildup to Sunday’s race.
Alongside Armitstead, other names stand out in the field who will tackle the loop along the coast from Fort Copacabana to the Grumari circuit with its two short climbs before heading back via the loop over the 8.9km Vista Chinesa ascent: the top climbers such as Anna van der Breggen and the world No1, Megan Guarnier, and Marianne Vos, the sport’s greatest all-rounder and the defending Olympic champion.
There was little doubt about the Dutchwoman’s form in the run-in to victory in London – where Armitstead took the first British medal of the home Games, a silver, in a summer deluge. The same cannot be said now as Vos has been fighting to regain fitness for the past 18 months. That has opened the way for others, such as the top climber and the double Giro d’Italia winner, Mara Abbott of the USA.
A few weeks ago Armitstead would have been good value as the favourite for the gold medal given her effervescent form this season, in which she has won the Tour of Flanders and other major one‑day races, plus the Tour of Britain.
That dominant win came in the days following her third strike when she now says she was aware that her season and career might be about to crumble into dust. The pressure she felt then must have been insignificant compared to what she has faced this week.
