28 Women’s road race:

Disappointment for Armitstead

The Olympic Games don’t always matter a great deal to athletes from professional sports. Just look at how many golfers and tennis players opted against competing in Rio. But you try telling American rider Mara Abbott that the Olympics don’t matter.

The hunt for gold, silver and bronze is as big as it gets in women’s cycling, so there could hardly have been a more cruel way for the 30 year-old climber to lose a medal than to do so with less than 200 metres to go, having ridden alone at the front of the race for 11 kilometres. As she time trialled the flat road to Ipanema beach, the final three medallists slowly reeled her back in, the gap dropping at an agonising but relentless rate of one second per 100m.

She must have believed that gold could have been hers but as she took her eyes off the finish line and glanced back down the strip on Copacabana, she saw Elisa Longo Borghini (bronze), Emma Johannsson (silver, her second after Beijing), and eventual winner Anna van der Breggen close in. After the line the tears, hugs and body language said it all.

(Nearly) the perfect race

Van der Breggen was no unworthy winner, however. With defending champion Marianne Vos on bottle duty, infiltrating breaks and playing the role of super domestique, the Dutch squad rode a perfect race. Annemiek van Vleuten could even have won the day had she not locked up while leading on the final descent and suffered a horrific crash into the kerb (see boxout).

For Britain’s Lizzie Armitstead, who described the course as tailor made for her Dutch rival, it was all she could do to battle to stay in contention with the pure climbers as she rode her own personal uphill time trial to keep her quarry in view on the narrow curves of the Canoas climb.

“I’m really happy with the tactic that I had and the effort that I did,” she said. “I came up short on the climb and that’s what I’ve been working very hard on, but that’s sport.”

Arguably a gap of 10 or 15 seconds smaller on the leading five riders could have seen her ride for a medal. But, as with Abbott, the chance to win one of the three most coveted prizes in women’s cycling came down to the slightest of margins.

Result

1. Anna van der Breggen (Ned) in 3:51.27 2. Emma Johansson (Swe) at same time 3. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) at same time 4. Mara Abbott (USA) at 4sec 5. Lizzie Armitstead (GBR) at 20sec 6. Kasia Niewadoma (Pol) at 20sec 7. Flavia Oliveira (Bra) at 20sec 8. Jolanda Neff (Swi) at 20sec 9. Marianne Vos (Ned) at 1.14 10. Ashleigh Moolman-pasio (RSA) at 1.14 Others: DNF Nikki Harris (GBR); DNF Emma Pooley (GBR).

August 7, Women’s Road Race, 137km, Pontal

Van der Breggen’s timing was impeccable