29 July, 2012

Olympic Road Races

Yep, that was the top level laziest peleton in the world, I still loved seeing the best cyclists in the world in my home city. But the winner is not cycling.

Although I’m very disappointed at not getting tickets for the Olympics I can’t imagine seeing anything much more dramatic than the finale of the Women’s road race in which Lizzie Armistead won a silver medal for Britain, narrowly beaten by Marriane Vos of Holland. Congratulations to both of them.

Not such a great outcome in the men’s cycle road race on Saturday for Team GB which I did go and watch . I cycled over to Thames Ditton to watch them on the way out then down to part of the Box Hill, which is where I took this photo. Stayed for 5 laps of the ciruit before heading back up to Thames Ditton to see them on the way back.

They put in a Herculean performance to lead the peleton for much of the 250km race, I think I saw a German on the front for one lap but other than that it was a GB rider all the way.

It was looking promising at Box Hill but by the time they got back to Thames Ditton it looked like the game was up and so it turned out with Vinokourov out-sprinting Rigoberto Uran for the win.

Not sure why the Germans and Australians didn’t help out, they both came with sprinters but didn’t seem to do much work on the front.

Hopefully it’ll be a good outcome for Wiggins and Froome in the Time Trial.