On July 24, Beijing time, the men's road group event of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games came to an end, and Richard Calapas (Elguardo) broke through at the last moment to win the gold medal with a time of 6 hours, 05 minutes and 26 seconds. Walter van Alte (Belgium) took the silver medal in the small group sprint, and this year's Tour de France champion Tadej Bogacha (Slovenia) defeated van Alte to win the bronze medal by a gap of one wheel.
Top 20 in the competition
If the road group of the last Rio Olympic Games was hailed as the most difficult, this year's Tokyo Olympic Games are even more difficult, with a total of 234 kilometers, climbing 4865 meters, after 14 kilometers of Mt. Fuji climb and 6.8 kilometers of mikoku mountain steep slopes, which is a great test for the rider's climbing ability.
Immediately after the honor ride, an eight-man breakout group was formed, and Sprint star Peter Sagan's brother Yuray Sagan was also among them, at one point widening the time gap to nearly twenty minutes. The last Olympic champion Van Avimat actively led the ride, leading the big group to constantly pursue.
At 80 kilometers of the race, due to the seams in the middle of the road, a small-scale fall occurred in the group, Thomas was "fully rotated" again, along with Hart, the British four males lost two people in an instant, affected by the fall, even if they returned to the group with the wake of the team car, it was useless, and they lost the hope of fighting for gold early.
The gap between the breakthrough group and the main group began to narrow rapidly after entering Mt. Fuji, several powerful teams successively exerted their strength, in the fierce pull of the forty-one-year-old veteran Valverde fell behind, the Chinese team's Wang Ruidong also withdrew from the race in Mt. Fuji, the road group competition is not the advantage of the Chinese team, looking forward to the women's field.
After the end of Mt. Fuji, the main group came to the famous Fuji International Circuit in Japan, the Fuji Circuit is located in Oyama Town, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, with a history of more than 40 years, and when the weather is good, you can see the beautiful scenery of Mt. Fuji in the northwest direction. The track is 4,563 meters long and has 16 corners. The longest straight, 1475 meters in the track, is a highlight of this track. As the finish line of today's men's road race, runners need to cross the field to reach The Three Kingdoms Mountain, and then return to the venue for the final sprint, where the individual time trial will be held a few days later.
After leaving the Fuji Circuit, the race reached the decisive point, Three Kingdoms Mountain, and as soon as it entered the climbing stage, the powerful Belgian team began to accelerate, and Pogacha then attacked, bringing out his teammate McNati, who was on the Emirates team, and Woods. Van Arter led the group in pursuit. The gap between the two small groups remained within a dozen seconds under van Alte's one-shot output. Then Kalapas and others caught up, Van Alte also accelerated, and formed a new gold group, Pogacha may be because the Ring of Law force is too strong to recover, obviously there is no such powerful attack of the gods, and Van Alte is getting more and more courageous, but the fiery state of the Ring law makes him the target of everyone.
The race came to the final 25 kilometers, the American team McNalti attacked, Carapas stuck, the big group behind each other stared at each other, the two were full of fire, and the second difference was instantly widened to 50 seconds. Van Alt went all out to chase the group downhill, narrowing the second difference to less than twenty seconds. In the last 5 kilometers, Kalapas attacked, throwing mcnati off. The group behind them did not reach a consensus to pursue, woods and Goldy attacked successively, but failed to close the second difference.
In the end, Kalapas came to the end with victory, clapping to celebrate the gold medal, Van Alte in the group sprint reproduced the unstoppable momentum of Xiang street to win the silver medal, and Bogacha also showed good sprint strength, taking off the bronze medal.
Since then, the six-hour and 234-kilometer men's grand division has come to an end, let us congratulate Kalapas for winning the next gold medal for Ecuador, and look forward to what surprises tomorrow's women's group competition can bring us!
EDIT: Can