Olympics Road Race 2024

August 3, 2024 Tactically, this Olympic Road Race was slated to be very complicated. Only five teams had four riders and the peloton rolled out with just 90 riders on a route of 280KM. Charles Kagimu of Uganda, Thanakhan Chaiyasombat of Thailand, Christopher Rougier-Langane of Mauritius, Eric Manizabayo of Rwanda, and Achraf Ed Doghmy of Morocco went on the attack right from the start. They built their advantage to over 13 minutes. With 194KM, the peloton started to wake up. Georgios Bouglas of Greece, Elia Viviani of Italy, Ryan Mullen of Ireland, and Gleb Syritsa of the Neutral Athletes got themselves clear and set the race into the next phase. Daan Hoole of the Netherlands, Mikkel Bjerg of Denmark, and Tiesj Benoot of Belgium started riding with 180KM to go. 45KM later, the race was closing in. The Viviani group was within 4 minutes of the lead break and the peloton brought the gap down to 7 minutes, 3 minutes behind the Viviani group, now 3 riders when Syritsa dropped away. The Viviani chase group caught the original break with 122KM to go but their lead to the peloton was down to 2 minutes 50 seconds. At 90KM to go, Ben Healy of Ireland and Alexey Lutsenko of Kazakhstan attacked out of the peloton. At that point, only Mullen and Viviani were left at the front. Healy and Lutsenko made it up to Mullen with 76KM to go but the peloton were within 20 seconds. A group of 7 led by Stefan Küng of Switzerland got out of the bunch at 58KM to go and the peloton started to look at each other. Benoot started riding a few KM's later but Healy and Lutsenko were over a minute ahead with the Küng group was out to 50 seconds. Mathieu van der Poel of the Netherlands made his move with 46KM to go on the steepest section of the climb to Montmartre. Wout van Aert of Belgium was quick to catch the wheel and the pair got a gap. Matteo Jorgenson of the USA, Toms Skujiņš of Latvia and Julian Alaphilippe of France bridged to make 5 in the third group but the peloton caught the group, leaving Healy at the front solo with the Küng group at 30 seconds and the peloton a further 15 seconds back. As the peloton were regrouping, Remco Evenepoel of Belgium attacked and no one was able to respond. He quickly got to the Küng group and kept the pressure high. They caught Healy with 33KM to go, now consisting of Evenepoel, Valentin Madouas of France, Marco Haller of Austria and Küng. Only Madouas was able to stay with Evenepoel on Montmartre for the second time. Van der Poel tried again on the climb but van Aert was stuck to his wheel once again. At the front, Evenepoel accelerated, dropping Madouas with 15KM to go. His gap was 1 minute to an evolving group of chasers. With 4KM to go, Evenepoel had 1 minute 12 seconds on Madouas and 1 minute 30 seconds on Jorgenson, Healy, Haller and Christophe Laporte of France. Moments later, Evenepoel flatted as he was going through the gates of the Louvre. A quick bike change got him going again, only losing 15 seconds. Evenepoel crossed the line for the Gold, becoming the first male to win Gold in the Road Race and the Individual Time Trial in the same Games. Madouas held on for Silver, overcome with joy when he crossed the line. Laporte won the sprint for Bronze, giving the host nation two riders on the podium.