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2021-07-25
Spoilers ahead!
The women's road race, like the men's, was to be raced on a hilly parcours near Mt. Fuji. Unlike the men, they left out the long climb of Fuji Sanroku and the steep Mikuni Pass, racing up to the Doushi Road and around Lake Yamanaka before descending to a circuit around the Fuji International Speedway. As in the men's race, a break got off early, with the Austrian Anna Kiesenhofer starting the moves, followed soon by Anna Plichta of Poland, Omer Shapira of Israel, Carla Oberholzer of South Africa and Vera Looser of Namibia. A few other moves were ultimately unable to join up with the breakaway and were ultimately swept up by the peloton. The Dutch brought an absolute juggernaut of a team to the Olympics, with former gold medalists Anna van der Breggen and Marianne Vos, former world champion Annemiek van Vleuten and the winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège Demi Vollering. With such a strong team -- stronger on paper, I would say than any of the teams in the men's race -- everyone expected them to control the breakaway, possibly with some attacks by van der Breggen or van Vleuten or saving it for a reduced sprint with Vos or Vollering. But the Dutch ceded that responsibility to other teams, notably the Germans, and the break slowly eked out a minute, three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes (!) before the concerted efforts of the Germans started to bring it back.
The race in the peloton started to kick off on the climb up of Doushi Road, and for a while there, it looked like things were playing into the Dutch team's hands. Despite a crash by van Vleuten, they attacked in succession before van Vleuten managed to get a gap. The relentless attacks had brought the breakaway's lead down to six minutes or so, and watching this, it looked kind of like a repeat of the 2019 World Championships, when van Vleuten dropped everyone on an early climb and soloed to victory. But this time around, there were still three riders out front, Looser and Oberholzer having been dropped out of the break. Kiesenhofer eventually attacked her breakaway companions and went away solo with van Vleuten closing in behind.
However, the gap between Kiesenhofer and van Vleuten never came below five minutes and a combination of attacks and steady riding by the Germans and the Americans eventually brought van Vleuten back. Now it was a cat-and-mouse game like we saw with the men yesterday. Who would ride to bring back the breakaway? Obviously it should have been the Dutch, who had all four of their stars in the group of favorites at the end. Possibly the Americans, who had managed to regroup around their fast finisher Coryn Rivera. It seemed to me like the Germans, led by Lisa Brennauer, put on the most concerted chase, but nothing really got organized, and Kiesenhofer entered the circuit with a four or five minute gap. Somewhere in between Plichta and Shapira were still hanging on. Attacks from the peloton, most notably by France's Juliette Labous reduced the gap further, but Kiesenhofer still had a few minutes and only a few kilometers left to race, and it was looking like she might actually pull it off.
The peloton swept up Plichta and Shapira upon reentering the race track and Annemiek van Vleuten launched a desperate last ditch attempt to catch Kiesenhofer on the hard race course. The only person who could follow was Italy's Elisa Longo Borghini, who never quite got on to van Vleuten's wheel, but managed to get a healthy gap over the rest of the favorites. Van Vleuten wasn't able to catch Kiesenhofer, and the Austrian mathematician crossed the line for a historic win from a 137 km breakaway. Van Vleuten crossed a minute later with her hands in the air, celebrating her solid silver medal performance, and Longo Borghini held on for third.
After the race, it emerged that van Vleuten thought she had won, that Plichta and Shapira were the last members of the breakaway to be caught. Van der Breggen apparently agreed, but, critically, Marianne Vos said she knew Kiesenhofer was still out there. Clearly there were some terrible communication problems among the Dutch team, whose tactics were even worse than the Belgians yesterday. First, they let the breakaway get a tremendous lead. Then, they refused to work to control it on the long climb of Doushi Road. They got van Vleuten off the front, which was a good move. During her attack, there was a shot of her asking the cameraman for the time gaps. Perhaps she didn't get the message then about Kiesenhofer, just getting the gap to Plichta and Shapira. In any case, it soon became clear that van Vleuten wasn't going to make it to Kiesenhofer. At that point, van der Breggen and van Vleuten and maybe Vollering should have gotten on the front and ridden like mad to bring it back for a sprint for Vos. Instead, they played games and forced the Germans to do the work and never got around to bringing Kiesenhofer back. Maybe they didn't know that Kiesenhofer was so far in front, and they thought they were just chasing Plichta and Shapira. The two riders were two minutes or so behind Kiesenhofer, so the Dutch might have thought everything was under control. If that's true, then why did Marianne Vos say she knew Kiesenhofer was still out there? More than anyone, she had the incentive to bring it back for a sprint. If she knew Kiesenhofer was out there, she should have told van Vleuten and van der Breggen to bring it back. What an absolute mess. The Belgians yesterday executed a fundamentally flawed plan, but today the Dutch failed to even make a plan.
Kiesenhofer deserves credit for her absolutely incredible ride. But the Dutch underestimated her and then flat out forgot about her, and they turned what could easily have been a gold medal into a consolation silver and a huge embarassment.
PS: It sounds like the Dutch are laying some of the blame on the lack of race radios in the Olympics. This is bullshit. Clearly radios would have helped, as they would have gotten confirmation from their team car that Kiesenhofer was still out front. They could also have counted. Maybe they got bad information on the road from the organizers, which should definitely be looked into. They could also have counted. And if Vos knew and van Vleuten and van der Breggen didn't, she could have told her teammates in person.