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2021-07-24
Spoilers ahead!
The men's road race was a hilly affair on the slopes of Mt. Fuji. As predicted the race had a relatively slow start with an eight-man breakaway up the road that ultimately got a 20 minute lead before Jan Tratnik of Slovenia almost single-handedly brought them back on the climb up to Fuji Sanroku, with some help from former Olympic champion Greg van Avermaet and a powerful acceleration from Giulio Ciccone of Italy on the final slopes. From there it was clear that everyone was just waiting for the brutally steep climb of the Mikuni Pass. Once there, two-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar launched the first real attack, followed only by Michael Woods of Canada and Brandon McNulty of the USA. From there it was clearly up to the Belgian champion and pre-race favorite Wout van Aert to pull it all back together, and a very select group came together over the top of the climb.
From there it was non-stop attacks in ones and twos, as no one wanted to go to the line against van Aert's strong sprint. One finally stuck with Richard Carapaz, the former Giro d'Italia winner from Ecuador, and McNulty, and once again van Aert basically had to do all of the chasing on his own. He managed to bring the gap down to around 10 seconds with a powerful acceleration on a small incline just before they got on to the Fuji International Speedway, but the noncohesive chasing group couldn't finish the job. McNulty finally cracked on a rise on the racetrack, leaving Carapaz on his own in front of the race. As the kilometers ticked down, it became increasingly clear that the group of favorites was fighting for a silver medal, and the gap ballooned out to a minute. Carapaz had time to savor his win as he crossed the line for an amazing victory as the second Olympic medalist from Ecuador, after race walker Jefferson Pérez. Behind van Aert won the sprint for silver, but was almost caught on the line by a fast finishing Pogačar who claimed the bronze medal for Slovenia.
The finish had the feel of a lot of races that we've seen recently, like the 2021 Milano-Sanremo or the 2020 World Championships or the 2019 Ronde van Vlaanderen where a small group of favorites is unable to pull back a late attacker because they are all too worried about losing the race in the sprint. Great for the riders who time their attacks perfectly like Carapaz, Jasper Stuyven, Julian Alaphilippe or Alberto Bettiol, but disappointing for the teams that sent super strong teams to the race (Belgium, Slovenia, Great Britain) only to have their leaders isolated in the long run to the finish. Van Aert and Pogačar could really have benefited from the help of Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič in the final three kilometers, but the young Evenepoel burned himself out following minor attacks on the road to the Mikuni Pass while Roglič might not have been in great form after leaving the Tour de France with injuries. The superpower teams were beaten by a team with just two competitors that rode a much smarter race, and I have to wonder if Belgium, a clear favorite for this year's World Championships in Flanders, will learn from this experience.