Since it opened to professionals in 1996, the men's road race at the Olympic Games has been notoriously difficult to predict. That year in Atlanta, for instance, there were faint rumblings beforehand that it was a course for sprinters – Mario Cipollini featured for Italy, after all – but in the end, a three-up sprint between hilly Classics specialists ensued, with Pascal Richard claiming gold.
At first glance, Paolo Bettini’s victory in Athens in 2004 suggests a race that followed the formbook rigorously, but nobody could have anticipated that the best one-day rider of the period would be joined all the way to the line by the hitherto unheralded Sergio Paulinho, then plying his trade with lowly Portuguese squad LA Aluminios-Pecol-Bombarral.
And, lest we forget, the build-up to London four years ago was dominated by paeans to the strength of the British squad assembled around Mark Cavendish, yet the day ended not with the widely predicted bunch sprint, but with Alexandre Vinokourov’s upset win ahead of the no less surprising Rigoberto Uran.
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The Rio de Janeiro course is, in statistical terms at least, the toughest of the past twenty years and, in theory, only a very elite cadre of riders should be in the shake-up for the medals on Saturday afternoon, yet the list of contenders stretches far beyond the ten riders selected below.
The dynamics of the Olympic road race are different to just about any other event at this level, including the World Championships. The smaller teams obviously make it more difficult to control, while there is a subtle difference, too, in the spoils on offer. An Olympic bronze medal is a rather weightier prize than the equivalent at the Worlds or a podium spot in a Classic. In short, the race for third can be as keenly contested as the battle for gold.
Alejandro Valverde (Spain)
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