With her arms outstretched, Anna Kiesenhofer suffocates and cries of joy after crossing the finish line in slow motion. With her eyes fixed on the sky, the new Olympic road cycling champion is alone in her world. For the peloton, it does not exist. Literally. So much so that, when Annemiek Van Vleuten arrives in her turn, a minute and several wheelbarrows later, she raises her arms, sure of her victory. A little further, she will be congratulated by her staff and opponents. The peloton believed that this cycling legend, who is only missing an Olympic title, had just made his dream come true. Except no.
“I didn’t know, apparently I was wrong,” said Van Vleuten on Dutch television. And to continue: “I have mixed feelings. I’m proud of my Olympic medal because I didn’t have one yet. I had a good race. “But the air conditioning is still there.
And indeed Lizzie Deignan in a BBC interview just said that van Vleuten had won – so the peloton didn’t know there was someone up the road. Now, is that an argument for race radios? Or is an argument for the opposite? # Tokyo2020
– Michael Hutchinson (@Doctor_Hutch) July 25, 2021
No earbuds and a crazy scenario
Two key elements can explain this total fail of Van Vleuten – and the rest of the peloton. The first is that the atria are banned from Olympic races. We run the old fashioned way, with the joys and inconveniences that that implies. This is perhaps what can explain the wait-and-see attitude of the Dutch very (too) expected at the back of the race and guilty of allowing too much to advance to a group of three riders, including Kiesenhofer, who finished by planting a victorious banderilla 40 meters from the finish.
We come to the second point. Distanced, the two breakaway partners of the Austrian ended up being caught by the peloton, after which the end of the race was suddenly lively. Juliette Labous opened hostilities before being countered by the Oranje armada. Looking back, this fight won by Van Vleuten was too enthusiastic to be just a fight for money in the minds of the runners. But the Dutch will have to be content. Despite her Martian record, she will surely know how to do it. Five years ago, in Rio, she gave up the Olympic race in a terrible fall. She has therefore seen worse.