With Fort Copacabana’s four fearsome Krupp cannons maintaining a dignified silence, it was left to the crowds lining the finishing straight running alongside the adjacent local beach to provide a suitably loud salute for Greg Van Avermaet as he pedalled to Olympic gold. In a thrilling men’s road race, the Belgian took advantage of late downhill carnage that took out several serious medal contenders including the leaders Vincenzo Nibali and Sergio Henao, as well as Team GB’s Geraint Thomas. Behind Van Avermaet, Denmark’s Jakob Fuglsang took silver in the sprint to the finish while Poland’s exhausted Rafal Majka seemed content to settle for bronze after more than six hours in the saddle.
“It was a parcours that was on the top of my limit,” said Van Avermaet, who as a teenager gave up a promising career as a goalkeeper with the Belgian second-tier side Mouscron-Péruwelz to focus on cycling. “I was having a good day already but everything still has to come together. You have to have that little bit of luck. You go too fast sometimes you cannot take the corners and a lot of guys wanted to go for it. Some guys took risks and we had a few crashes. I was happy to stay safe. If you’re on the ground the race is over.”
The race in question began and ended beside the heavily fortified appendix protruding from the junction joining two of Brazil’s most famous beaches, the Copacabana and Praia de Ipanema, where a 144-strong field convened to slug it out over 237.5 kilometres in an eagerly anticipated one-day race that never disappointed. Competing over an attritional course that had climbing specialists rubbing their hands with glee, the peloton may not have appreciated the beauty of their surroundings but TV viewers will be treated to few finer advertisements for the much-maligned Rio as the riders negotiated a route that featured Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf Mountain and the shimmering blue-green waters of Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas along an always splendidly picturesque backdrop.
A stellar cast of mountaineers and one-day Classics riders had assembled, despite most of the world’s foremost sprinters having hoisted the white flag of surrender on first glance of the route’s intimidating shark’s-teeth profile over a year ago. There were no shortage of contenders competing in national teams numbering up to five, with Great Britain, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Colombia signalling the most deadly intent by fielding their full complement of permitted riders.
Three times a winner of the Tour de France’s maillot jaune, this was Chris Froome’s latest tilt at yellow of a shinier hue and curiously, for a man who earns his bread and butter with a Sky team renowned for its attention to detail and “marginal gains”, his race was almost over before it began. Having forgotten to sign on, he had to be reminded by two BBC reporters who heard his name repeatedly called over the PA minutes before the off.
Froome seemed little more than the nominal leader of a team that had potential winners in Thomas and Adam Yates, who found themselves in a small cluster of leaders with less than 30 kilometres to go. Similarly formidable, the Italians had Nibali and Fabio Aru.
Desperate to triumph on South American soil, Colombia’s mountain goats included Henao and Jarlinson Pantano, the latter forming part of an early six-man escape group that at one point enjoyed a lead of over seven minutes before being reeled in by the chasing posse. Sir Bradley Wiggins opined recently that decent Tour de France form would not desert riders at the Olympics and no fewer than seven different winners of this year’s lumpier stages, including Van Avermaet, lined up to take their chance in Rio.
Following its opening flat phase, the race was punishing but controlled during four laps of the Grumari Circuit, a tree-lined 25km loop featuring two testing climbs and a stretch of teeth-jarring cobbles bumpy enough to send water-bottles flying. However, it was over two and a half laps of the more brutal Vista Chinesa that the race was decided, with its nine-kilometre ascent preceding a technically difficult downhill that helped to separate the men from the boys and several well placed medal contenders from their bicycles.
As many of the good and the great of the professional peloton were shelled out the back on Vista Chinesa, the remnants of the original escape party were hoovered up by a chase group containing Nibali, Aru, Thomas, Henao, Majka, Fuglsang and Van Avermaet. Looking good for podium places, Nibali and Henao crashed horribly on the final descent in an accident Majka needed all his supreme bike-handling skills to avoid. Thomas also ended up forlorn in the gutter alongside his Rio dreams and remounted to finish a disconsolate 12th.
“He’s fallen heavy, he’s got plenty of skin off, but he’s OK, I think,” reported the British team coach Rod Ellingworth. “Looking at Geraint there he was proper, proper disappointed. He knew that was a proper gold medal chance.” Thomas himself was more succinct, declining to talk to reporters but tweeting that he was “gutted to end like that with all to play for”.
Alone in front with his thoughts of glory and Fuglsang and Van Avermaet in hot pursuit on the final stretch for home, a visibly wilting Majka was caught two kilometres out and accepted bronze, leaving the Dane and Belgian to contest the sprint. It was Van Avermaet who mounted the winning challenge, before mounting the podium’s top step to accept an exceptionally hard won gold.
