The capricious nature of road racing revealed itself on Rio’s perilous Olympic course again as Dutch cyclist Anna van der Breggen took gold after her team-mate suffered a horror crash and American Mara Abbott was cruelly denied a medal.
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“This was way past technical, this was unsafe, and it means people who designed the course have seen it and left it”.
The KNWU also disclosed that Van Vleuten was conscious and talking.
“We knew this was way past this being a technical, this was risky”.
Chris Boardman, 1992 Olympic champion and BBC co-commentator, thought the route was “dangerous”.
London road race champion Marianne Vos and British world champion Lizzie Armitstead also lost touch with the leaders.
“After the men’s race, . we were all warned that we need to take care of that descent”, van der Breggen said.
Towards the bottom of hill Van Vleuten appeared to lock her wheel and flew headlong over her handlebars into a bank – lying motionless in a twisted heap as Abbott sped by.
Sailing past her crumpled teammate, van der Breggen suddenly realized she was the only hope the Netherlands had of defending its gold medal in the women’s Olympic road race.
On Saturday Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali broke both his collar bones when he crashed on the same descent while leading the men’s race. “When you’re going that fast, you’ve got a very small part of the wheel in contact with the road at any time, so if anything gets between your wheel and the road, it’s catastrophic”, she said. “I think I took a little bit of risk, but not too much, and I think this was the best decision because if you’re on the ground, the race is over”.
“I’m actually quite angry because I looked at the road furniture and thought nobody can crash here and get up”, he said.
“It was a horrendous crash”, said Johansson, who added a silver to the one she won in Beijing in 2008. I did it for Annemiek.
‘I’m really just waiting for news on Van Vleuten, ‘ said Boardman live on television. Gracie Elvin, an Australian who rides with her for Orica, said: “She’s one of the most positive people on our team, she’s been my biggest fan this year and given me lots of confidence”.
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Katrin Garfoot withdrew early in proceedings as expected, given she has the individual time trial on Wednesday.
