Road Race, Individual, Women

The 2012 and 2013 World Road Race winner Marianne Vos of the Netherlands was in Rio to defend the title she won in London four years earlier, but a lot of inactivity in the previous two years meant that it was not a very realistic prospect. Britain’s Lizzie Armitstead, however, the silver medallist in 2012 and reigning world champion, was one of the fancied riders despite some people feeling she should have been banned after missing three OOC doping tests between August 2015 and June 2016. She was cleared to compete in the Olympics, however, by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Furthermore, Armitstead had 16 ‘clean’ tests in 2016. Other potential medallists were London 2012 bronze medallist Olga Zabelinskaya, and 2015 World Championship silver and bronze medallists Anna van der Breggen, Netherlands, and Megan Guarnier, USA.

There were no changes in the format since London 2012, with the 68 starters setting off in a mass start from Flamengo Park and, after travelling 37.4 km along Avenida Atlântica, completing two laps of the 24.7 km Grumari circuit, which was used for the time trials, before a 26.4 km ride to the Vista Chinesa circuit where they completed a 20.4 km loop followed by the 3.3 km ride back to Flamengo Park - the total distance being 136.9 km.

First to attack at 21 km was the youngest rider in the race, 20-year-old Lotte Kopecky of Belgium, and five kilometres later she had a lead of over two minutes. She kept extending her lead with Romy Kasper of Germany making a move out of the peloton to chase Kopecky, but the German was soon back with the pack. At 48 km it was then up to Ellen van Dijk (Netherlands), Giorgia Bronzini (Italy) and Anna Plichta (Poland) to chase Kopecky, and her lead at 62 km was below a minute for the first time in the last 39 km. Shortly afterwards she was back with the group before Audrey Cordon of France was next to attack at 81 km but her lead did not last long and all the riders were together again at 89 km. Seven riders then made a break and in the group was the defending champion Marianne Vos. That leading pack was soon down to four riders: van der Breggen, Annemiek van Vleuten, Mara Abbott (USA) and Elisa Longo Borghini of Italy, the daughter of the Olympic cross country skier Guidina Dal Sasso. Van Vleuten then made a break with 18 km to go but was joined by Abbott with Emma Johansson joining the chasing pack of three riders some 50 seconds behind. With 15 km to go it started raining and van Vleuten was in the lead on her own but on the fast descent on the Vista Chinesa circuit back to the start, just as in the men’s race the day before, when the outright leaders crashed, van Vleuten had a bad crash. This left Abbott the lone leader 40 seconds ahead of the three chasers van der Breggen, Longo Borghini and Johansson but, agonizingly for the American, she was caught metres from the line with van der Breggen crossing the line first to make it successive women’s Olympic road race titles for the Netherlands, after Marianne Vos in 2012. For Abbott, she missed out on a medal as both Johansson and Longo Borghini overtook her for silver and bronze respectively. For Johansson, it was her second silver to add to the one she won in Beijing. Before turning professional in 2012, the Dutch champion, and 2015 and 2016 Flèche Wallonne winner, van der Breggen trained as a nurse, and completed an internship in Ghana.