Cycling at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's individual road race
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Women's individual road race at the Games of the XXXII Olympiad | ||||||||||
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Venues | Musashinonomori Park Fuji Speedway | |||||||||
Date | 25 July 2021 | |||||||||
Competitors | 67 from 40 nations | |||||||||
Winning time | 3h 52' 45" | |||||||||
Medalists | ||||||||||
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The women's individual road race event at the 2020 Summer Olympics was held on 25 July 2021 on a course starting at Musashinonomori Park in Tokyo and ending at the Fuji Speedway in Shizuoka Prefecture.[1] 67 cyclists from 40 nations competed, with 48 completing the course.[2]
The race was won by rank outsider Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria. Kiesenhofer was part of the original breakaway, powering away at the very start of the race along with four other riders. She proceeded to drop her breakaway companions, all of whom were swallowed up by the peloton, soloing off the front at the Kagosaka Pass with 41 kilometres (25 mi) to go and holding off the late chase from the pack. She won by 1' 15" over the silver medalist, Annemiek van Vleuten of the Netherlands.
Van Vleuten made a late attack with 2.1 kilometres (1.3 mi) to go, distancing the remnants of the peloton. She celebrated after crossing the line, having mistakenly thought that all the breakaway riders had been caught and that she had won gold.[3] The bronze medal went to Elisa Longo Borghini of Italy, after unsuccessfully attempting to bridge up to van Vleuten's attack and holding off the peloton.[4]
The Olympic road races are unusual in the modern professional circuit in the complete absence of team radios, an anomaly which, together with Kiesenhofer's relative anonymity in the peloton, factored heavily into the shock outcome of the 2021 race. Approaching the line, the peloton appeared unaware that the unheralded Kiesenhofer had been one of the escapees, had stayed off the front and finished the race substantially ahead of them.
Kiesenhofer's win was considered a huge upset; she had trained for the event without a coach or a professional team, and was not viewed as a meaningful contender to win a medal.[4][5] Her solo victory was described as one of the biggest upsets in Olympics history.[6]