Olympic Road Race: Samuel Sanchez (Spain) won a closely contested uphill sprint over David Rebellin (Italy) and Fabian Cancellera (Switzerland), with Alexander Kolobnev (Russia), Andy Schleck (Luxemberg) and Michael Rogers (Australia) 4th,5th ,6th respectively.
The race was like 240+km, with the winners coming in at 6:20+ mins. 6 whole hours out of which about half was upslope. From this view point, a runnin marathon doesn't look that daunting compared to a cycling road race. And 140+ starters, only 3 medals were to be contended. Not suprisingly, that meant about half the field dropped out and did not finish the race.
The race saw a few strong breaks develop, before Italy reeled in the break. Spain then pushed the pace, which greatly reduced the field. In the final 20k of the race, Andy Schleck split open the field via numerous short attacks, and in the last about 10k Sanchez, Rebellin, Kolobnev and Rogers. He made use of the remaining upslopes to reduce the group to 3 by dropping Kolobnev and Rogers before the final downslope run in of about 5k. The 3 then rode a TTT for the remaining k, but were probably also concerned about saving energy for the final sprint. Their pace was around 57kmh. At that moment, bronze, silver, gold, looked to be divided amongst the 4 of them. Rogers and Kolobnev though were doing a 2 man TTT and closing the 15sec gap slowly. With 2K to go, Cancellera (World Time Trial champ) had attacked out of the chasing peloton and dragged Rogers and Kolobnev up to the front group. Andy Schleck was noticeably frustrated crossing the line in 5th, slamming his fist on his handlebars.
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