Riding a tightrope
The Olympic road races were treading along a narrow tightrope between success and disaster, and although you might not have seen it on TV between the stunning shots of coastline, jungle and beach, at times the events were very close to wobbling and falling off.
For the riders, it meant that the dangerous sections of the course were not adequately protected. The vast difference in ability levels didn’t help — one Iranian rider rode straight into a wall on the steep drop-offs on the opening Grumari circuit — but in particular the exposed road furniture of the Vista Chinesa descent was a disaster waiting to happen. The following day Annemiek van Vleuten in the women’s race (see overleaf) was very lucky to escape without injuries even more serious than fractured vertebrae and concussion.
Rio had never organised a professional bike race of such scale before, and the lack of experience was clear to see. The grandstands were erected after the finish line, which meant that fans who had bought tickets (though there weren’t very many of them with Copacapabana beach only 10m away) got a great view of riders dodging photographers and Games volunteers. Concurrently, the press zone, which should have been after the line, was situated with 100m to go; if media wanted any interviews, riders had to ride back down the course during the race to do them.
The finish line was a labyrinth of zinc-plated steel, dead ends and security checkpoints, all of varying strictness. Once one guard had waved you through with a quick glance, another would scan your body, check your bag and make you eat your sandwiches in front of him because he deemed you couldn’t bring them in. One even refused to let anyone in with a bottle bearing any logos or any liquid, which resulted in a queue of people taking the blue wrappers off their bottled water handed out just moments before or downing a pint of it.
Members of the UCI present in Rio — which included president Brian Cookson — were immensely frustrated by the last-minute work they’d had to do, such as produce accurate maps of the course, and the missed opportunities, such as the failure to get a decent crowd along the finish line. But this was superseded by an immense sigh of relief that it had all gone OK. Just about.