O LY MPIC G A ME S
Established 1896 Editions 33
WITH ITS SEPARATION
from the race calendar and riders’ day jobs on trade teams - and occurrence every four years - gold in the Olympic Games road race hasn’t always been the prestige victory that it is for other sports. In recent years, however, that has changed and though gold here still doesn’t carry as much weight on a palmares as, say, a Paris-Roubaix, it’s still a feather in the cap of any rider.
That’s particularly true for the winners of the Tokyo 2020 road races who, for very different reasons, returned home to heroes’ welcomes in 2021 (when the delayed Tokyo Games took place). Richard Carapaz became just the third athlete from Ecuador to win Olympic gold, while Austria’s Anna Kiesenhofer was the ultimate outsider, who kept the world’s best at arm’s length by being the sole survivor of the race’s breakaway.
Neither the Tour de France or the Tour de France Femmes will visit Paris this summer, with the Olympic road races being held in and around the city on 3 (men’s) and 4 (women’s) August. The 273km men’s road race departs Paris to the southwest after a
2020 Podium (Men’s RR)
1. Richard Carapaz
2. Wout van Aert
3. Tadej Pogačar procession by the Eiffel Tower. The Chevreuse Valley offers challenging terrain, with Classicsstyle inclines coming thick and fast. The next 225km of the route takes place in the wider Paris region, before a final 48km on a circuit in Paris, including three ascents of the Butte Montmartre (1km at 6.5%) cobbled climb. There’s close to 10km of flat roads into the finish before a likely sprint finish on the Trocadéro. The women’s race is 158km, following a similar route out of Paris, though has a less thorough exploration of its hinterland,
2020 Podium (Women’s RR)
1. Anna Kiesenhofer
2. Annemiek van Vleuten
3. Elisa Longo Borghini before the same three ascents of Butte Montmartre into the finish.
It’s a course that’ll suit the usual suspects of the one-day Classic, the Tour of Flanders, such as Mathieu van der Poel and Lotte Kopecky. For the first time in Olympics history, an equal number (90) of men and women will compete in the road races. In the context of the calendar, these are small fields and inevitably affect tactics. Countries have different numbers of riders on their teams, according to past performance, but even the biggest teams have just four riders in them (GB will have four in both men’s and women’s races). In the time trial, equality rules again, as 35 riders will contest both men’s and women’s races on the same course, a flat 32.4km.