August 3/24 14:43 pm - Olympic Games: Evenepoel Takes Second Gold on the Road

Posted by Editoress on 08/3/24
 

Belgium's Remco Evenepoel became the first man in Olympic history to win both the Olympic time trial and road race at the same Games on Saturday, with a superb solo road race win in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. French riders took second and third, with Canadians Mike Woods and Derek Gee finishing 41st and 44th, respectively.

The 273 kilometre race opened with a long breakaway that gained over 15 minutes on the bunch in the first 100 kilometres of racing. But the competition didn't begin to get serious until the final 100 kilometres, with the gap down to three minutes and the original escapees fading. With 82 kilometres to go, the race leaders were Elia Viviani (Italy) and Ryan Mullen (Ireland), less than a minute ahead.

Mullen's teammate, Ben Healy (Ireland), launched an attack to go up the road Mullen and brought Kazakhstan's Alexey Lutsenko with him. Viviani was quickly dropped and Mullen buried himself for his teammate before swinging off.

At 63 kilometres to go, a group of seven attacked out of the peloton to bridge across, including Woods and France's Valentin Madouas. As the race entered the final circuit for three laps, including what was expected to be the decisive cobbled Montmarne climb, Healy dropped Lutsenko and was holding off the chase group. World champion Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) then attacked on the climb, quickly followed by Belgian rival Wout van Aert, Matteo Jorgenson (USA), Christophe Laporte (France), Tom Skujins (Latvia) and Julien Alaphilppe (France). This group pulled to within ten seconds of the Woods group, but van der Poel sat up when no one would work with him, and they were reabsorbed by the peloton.

Meanwhile, Healy was plugging along 30-35 seconds in front of the Woods group, who were starting to come apart. At 35 kilometres to go, Evenepoel launched a massive attack out of the peloton, quickly catching the Woods group and going straight to the front. The Belgian set a torrid pace, and the group came apart, with only Madouas able to follow Evenepoel. The duo bridged up to Healy with 31 kilometres to go, and Evenepoel eased up slightly, allowing Stefan Kung (Switzerland) and Marco Haller (Austria) to rejoin the leaders.

Mathieu van der Poel tried to attack again out of the bunch with van Aert on his wheel, but was quickly brought back and that was the end of his chances for the day, as he eventually finished 12th. At the front, Evenepoel again opened the throttle, with only Madouas and Healy able to stay with him. The Irishman was finally dropped, leaving only Madouas to try and follow Evenepoel's wheel with 20 kilometres to go.

At 15 kilometres to go, on the final climb up Montmarne, Evenepoel accelerated again and Madouas was gone. Evenepoel steadily pulled away for the rest of the race and was 1:17 ahead of second when he has a scare with two kilometres to go, suffering a flat. Dropping his bike, and standing in the middle of the road screaming for his team car, Evenepoel was quickly underway again to still win by a minute. Madouas, losing ground steadily on a chase group of nine, managed to hold on for the silver medal, with his team mate Laporte winning the sprint for bronze.

"It was pretty spectacular," said Gee, about the enormous crowds that lined the streets of the final circuit, racing on his birthday. "It's probably the loudest I've ever heard in a bike race, going up the climb on the circuit. It was pretty amazing."

"It was tough [with only two Canadians in the race]. We just tried to get to the head of the race and give ourselves the best shot. Obviously, we always knew it was going to be tough, but if you are not ahead of the race, then you are not going to be able to follow a guy like Remco. So we gave it a shot [with Woods in the chase group} and I think we put ourselves in a good position, but it just didn't work out."

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