Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara stormed to a second Olympic gold in the men’s road cycling time trial while veteran American Kristin Armstrong won the event a third time on the women’s side on a wet Wednesday at the Rio Olympics.
The 2008 winner and four-time world champion Cancellara clocked 1 hour 12 minutes 15.42 seconds on a wet morning over the 54.5-kilometre distance. He finished a massive 47.41 seconds ahead of Dutch silver medallist Tom Dumoulin.
Tour de France champion Christopher Froome of Britain had to settle for bronze, more than a minute behind Cancellara. Armstrong meanwhile came out of retirement a second time to dominate the women’s 29.7km race on a slippery and wet course in 44 minutes 26.42 seconds on the eve of her 43rd birthday, crossing the finish line with a bleeding nose.
Russia’s Olga Zabalinskaya, who got her Olympic berth via a ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), trailed by 5.55 seconds to take silver. Sunday’s road race winner Anna van der Breggen of the Netherlands captured bronze, 11.38 seconds off the pace.
“I don’t have words to describe it. When you’ve already been two times at the pinnacle of the sport, why risk coming back for the gold medal? The best answer I can give is that I can,” she said. “Today the stars aligned. I knew it was going to be a close race. My coach said to me, ‘OK, you decide what colour medal you want to have.’ I dug so deep. To hear the national anthem on the podium, that’s my favourite part of the Olympics.”
Armstrong won gold at Beijing 2008 and retired the next year to start a family. She returned a year ahead of winning gold again in London 2012; and then went back into retirement which also included three hip operations before deciding on another Olympic adventure in Rio.
“You become mentally stronger and more experienced with age,” she said yesterday after her latest coup. Zabalinskaya said “I’m very happy, but of course, I am also disappointed that I could not win the gold medal.”
Others were not amused about her presence in the wake of allegations of widespread and state-sponsored doping in Russia. She got to Rio because the CAS ruled the IOC could not exclude Russians who have served a doping ban in the past.
Zabalinskaya was banned for a doping offence in 2014 but protested her innocence on Wednesday, stating “I am clean” and that she could not have taking in forbidden substances because she was breast-feeding her third child at the time. “I am surprised that she is here,” Van der Breggen said, and 14th-placed Briton Emma Pooley agreed by saying: “She shouldn’t be here.”
But Zabalinskays said: “It’s very important, because it’s the Olympic Games. It’s important for me, and for Russia.”