Rio 2016: Fabian Cancellara takes time trial gold

Chris Froome’s ambitions to improve on the bronze he won in the men’s time trial at London 2012 were thwarted when he was forced to settle for the same medal behind Fabian Cancellara and Tom Dumoulin. There will be no more popular winner than the Swiss 35-year-old, a man known in cycling circles as Spartacus who raged against the dying of a light that will be extinguished later this season with his retirement, to take his second Olympic time trial gold medal. His was a sensational ride over a parcours that many thought wouldn’t suit him and in conditions that didn’t really suit anyone.

As well as coping with the forbidding climbs of the Grumari Circuit, those contesting the men’s time trial were forced to contend with Mother Nature’s tetchiness on an uncharacteristically dirty day of angry seas and crosswinds in Rio. They did not have it quite as bad as the women who preceded them, but 37 riders took their chance under a canopy of grey skies in a damp and grimy race contested in soft rain that greased the asphalt and made conditions considerably more testing than expected. With each competitor’s spin around the course topped and tailed by a buffeting from strong winds blowing in from the Atlantic, what already promised to be a long, stamina-sapping and technically challenging journey became significantly more arduous.

The trip was 54.5km, extremely long by the standards of time trialling and nearly 10km further in distance than any of those staged in this year’s Grand Tours. It began and ended in Portal, on the outskirts of Rio about 30km west along the coast from where the road race peloton went under the gun. It took in two circuits of the Grumari Circuit, that hilly and picturesque tree-lined 25km loop the field tackled twice on Sunday. In a fit of mercy, the organisers bypassed the stretch of cobbles that had done for so many inner tubes and poorly holstered water bottles at the weekend.

Not to be confused with the Vista Chinesa, whose treacherous descent claimed, among several others, both the men’s and women’s road race leaders Vincenzo Nibali and Annemiek van Vleuten in serious crashes, the Grumari Circuit boasts two significant climbs. The eponymous ascent snakes to a height of 129m at a gradient of around 12% and precedes a tricky, twisting, often narrow descent. The subsequent Grota Funda climb is longer but significantly more straightforward. Rising to two kilometres at a little under 7%, considerably less concentration is required to negotiate the meandering downhill that follows.

Set-up was all important and most riders opted for a rear disc wheel, clip-on handlebars and eschewed the option of a deep rimmed front wheel to minimise wind resistance and offer better handling. Most riders, but not all of them. One of a few cyclists drafted in at the last moment due to late withdrawals of the lame and halt from the road race, the bearded Namibian Dan Craven was first down the ramp on a borrowed bicycle and finished well behind several of the riders who set off after him.

Still bearing the raw tattoos of his sickening crash when looking good for a medal on Vista Chinesa in the road race, Team GB’s Geraint Thomas was not forced to slum it in such a fashion and was the quickest of 22 starters at the 10km mark three or four minutes before Froome set off. The three-times Tour de France champion and bronze medal winner of this event in London set off with a packed lunch of two energy gels stuffed in shorts of his blue skinsuit and his Team Sky coach Tim Kerrison, flown in specially for this event, safely stowed in the support car.

Despite its bumpy topography, this was a depressingly flat affair. At the coronation of Bradley Wiggins in London four years ago, crowds thronged the route from start to finish and created a ferocious din as he pedalled his way into a clubhouse lead and on to that preposterous but brilliantly conceived golden throne from which he would not be ousted. By contrast, public interest in Rio was negligible with the inclement weather ensuring that not even the few inquisitive beach-goers who’d looked in on the finish of the road race were on hand to take the bare look off proceedings.

On a course that was all about pacing, Froome was seventh at the first time-check where Cancellara had posted the fastest time and never slowed down. Ahead of him on the course, Australia’s Rohan Dennis had been faster but was forced into a bike change that slowed his gallop. Elsewhere out-of-sorts time trial specialist and London silver medalist Tony Martin from Germany did not have one of his better days, while Dutch rider Tom Dumoulin recovered sufficiently from a broken arm sustained in the Tour de France to secure second place.

(Guardian service)