On Saturday’s first road race of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Remco Evenepoel earned double road gold, the first man to do so. At Sydney 2000, Dutch woman Leontien van Moorsel took the time trial and road race titles. Canada’s Michael Woods was active in the latter half of the race and finished top Canadian in 40th.
The Course
Beginning and ending in the shadow the Eiffel Tower, the men’s road race was 273 km long with 2800 metres of climbing and 13 named ascents including the cobbled Côte de la Butte Montmartre (1 km, 6.5 percent) on the three 18.4-km finishing circuits in central Paris. Most of the course was west of the city in two large loops. There were four climbs between 800 metres and 1.3 km in length between kilometers 166 and 184. The last summit of Montmartre came with 9.5 km to go.
With 2020 champion Richard Carapaz absent, and a Classics-like course on offer, anticipation was that the race would be a showdown between World Champion Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert, silver medalist in Tokyo.
The Canadian contingent was Michael Woods, fifth in Tokyo, and Derek Gee, two of 90 competitors.
Immediately four fellows from Africa and a Thai took off and they would be the day’s main breakaway. With 190 km to go and three climbs down, four riders including Elia Viviani and Ryan Mullen lit out after them. Back in the pack, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark chased.
We have the first breakaway of the day 🚴🏼♂️
🇲🇺 Christopher Rougier-Lagane
🇹🇭 Thanakhan Chaiyasombat
🇺🇬 Charles Kagimu
🇷🇼 Eric Manizabayo
🇲🇦 Achraf Ed DoghmyThe group is now over six minutes ahead of the peloton #Cycling #RoadCycling #OlympicCycling pic.twitter.com/aCirwOJg5r
— UCI (@UCI_cycling) August 3, 2024
At the midway point, 10 climbs still on the horizon, the Thailand-Mauritius-Morocco-Rwanda-Uganda quintet was 6:00 ahead of the peloton and the Viviani chase was exactly half that time. After Climb 4, the two groups merged and started to shed riders, the peloton now 2:30 in arrears.
On the Côte de Châteaufort, things started to heat up. Viviani and Mullen went clear. Gee sped up at the pointy end of the peloton, drawing a move from Alexey Lutsenko and Ben Healy, the Kazakh and Irishman trying to bridge to the Italian and another Irishman. Viviani couldn’t hang, but…
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