Four-rider teams, mammoth distances, a lack of race radios and the prize at stake – a gold medal at the foot of the Eiffel Tower – may make this weekend’s Olympic road race the most intense one-day event these riders ever face.
The smaller teams and lack of communications may also make the men’s and women’s races, which will climax in the labyrinthine streets of the Butte Montmartre, on Saturday and Sunday, chaotic and uncontrolled.
Many of the world’s top riders will compete in Saturday’s men’s event including the world road race champion, Mathieu van der Poel, of the Netherlands, the Olympic time trial champion, Remco Evenepoel, and his Belgian compatriot and time trial bronze medallist, Wout Van Aert. Mads Pedersen, the Danish sprinter, and the resurgent former world champion Julian Alaphilippe of France will also race.
Tom Pidcock and Josh Tarling lead Team GB, one of a handful of nations with a full quota in the men’s race, supported by former British national champion Fred Wright and Welsh climber Stephen Williams.
There are several notable absentees: Olympic champion Richard Carapaz was not selected while the Tour de France winner, Tadej Pogacar, withdrew due to fatigue against the backdrop of a feud with his Slovenian federation over the non-selection of his partner, Urska Zigart.
“Tadej would have been one of the top guys at the front,” Pidcock said, “but I don’t necessarily think he would have been the favourite on a course like that. He would have got a medal but to win, the guys with a bit more raw power – Van der Poel, Van Aert, Pedersen – it’s pretty suited to these guys.”
Pidcock added fellow gold medallist Evenepoel, who finished third in the Tour, to that list. “A rider like Remco can go [from] far,” he said, “because the teams are very small and it is going to be pretty unstructured.”
Pidcock comes to the 273km race on a high after winning a second Olympic gold on Monday in mountain biking, while Tarling comes with a point to prove after missing bronze by just two seconds in last weekend’s individual time trial.
The critical phases in the men’s and women’s races will play out on the old streets of Montmartre, where the road races will enter a new phase, condensing from a large peloton on wide avenues in suburban Paris to a small group speeding up narrow climbs on a city centre circuit.
The 8% cobbles of Rue Lepic, birthplace of Renault cars, once home to Vincent van Gogh as well as the fictitious film heroine Amélie Poulain, will provide the most likely platform for the key selections during the final kilometres.
For Pidcock, buoyed up by his exuberant win on Monday, the tight steep roads may prove ideal terrain. But he will not be alone in that thought and Van der Poel, who sped to Paris in his Lamborghini before skipping a planned reconnaissance ride on Thursday to rest in his hotel room, is one of those expecting a rough ride.
“It is possible the race goes on Montmartre, but also earlier,” he said. “But it looks like a gruelling race. I am always happy with a hard final. That works well in the Classics and I expect the same for the Olympics.”
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At 158km, the women’s road race is shorter than the men’s but expected to be just as testing. The likely scenario is a showdown between the SD Worx ProTime teammates, Lotte Kopecky (Belgium), and Lorena Wiebes (Netherlands).
“The finishing circuit was tougher than expected,” Wiebes said after Thursday’s reconnaissance ride. “The last climb at Montmartre is 10km from the finish, but the peloton will be stretched.”
“It’s all up and down, and a lot of corners. It reminds me a bit of the finishing circuit in Glasgow last year, [at the world championships] but the climbs here are not as steep.”
Anna Henderson, Olympic silver medallist in the women’s time trial a week ago, will join London 2012 silver medallist Lizzie Deignan, Pfeiffer Georgi and Anna Morris in Team GB colours.
The in-form Henderson, second in this year’s Tour of Britain, and British national road race champion Georgi are both expected to be there at the death in Montmartre. But in such long races other tactical nuances might come into play. If push comes to shove, will riders be able to rely on discreet support from their trade teammates?
Pidcock and Tarling may be part of a strong British team, but also have four other Ineos Grenadiers teammates in the Olympic field. Up on the Butte, on the steep cobbled streets during the last lap, even a few seconds behind a teammate’s wheel may yet make all the difference.