The best-laid plans of the world’s top racers were shattered amid the mayhem of Montmartre’s cobblestone streets, as Kristen Faulkner of the USA team emerged to win the gold medal in the women’s Olympic road race.
On a day fraught with tactical complexity, the lack of race radios heightened the sense of chaos. It need a cool head to assess the chances of victory, and when it came to the critical time, just under three kilometers from the Trocadéro, Faulkner had it.
Behind her, Marianne Vos of the Netherlands, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist, and Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky, the current global road race champion, lamented the tactical stalemate that allowed the American to escape. Vos and Kopecky were not alone in their feelings: Team GB’s riders were also forced to consider what may have been after a potentially race-winning situation dissipated, leaving them out of the medals, albeit Pfeiffer Georgi finished a creditable fifth.
With just three countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy) starting with a full quota of four participants, the 92-rider race was even more chaotic than the men’s event on Saturday.
Team GB’s original four-rider lineup had been reduced to three even before the start, with Anna Morris dropping out to focus on the track racing programme, which begins on Monday. That left Anna Henderson, silver medallist in the women’s time trial a week ago, the London 2012 silver medallist Lizzie Deignan and Georgi, the British national champion, pursuing GB hopes in the 158km race.
As in the men’s race, an opportunistic break moved clear in the early stages, but it was on the Côte du Pavé des Gardes, 90km from the finish, that the first serious attacks materialised. Further accelerations put paid to the early breakaways and the main favourites arrived together, at the finishing circuit, on the Côte de la butte de Montmartre. At the foot of the first ascent to the Sacré Coeur, a crash delayed Faulkner’s United States teammate Chloé Dygert and also held up Kopecky.
That proved the catalyst for a select group, that included all three British riders, to move clear. With Kopecky distanced and other contenders also cut adrift, the trio were suddenly in pole position. But that situation was short-lived. In the absence of information, the GB team seemed uncertain on the best tactics and, in fact, ended up unwittingly attacking each other.
Meanwhile Kopecky, who will race this week in the omnium in the Olympic velodrome, finally recaptured the front of the race. “I had to go all in to get myself in contention again,” she said.
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