Rio de Janeiro >> As a dark and wet morning on South America’s Atlantic coast slipped into a darker, wetter afternoon, Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara sliced his way across a demanding Olympic Games time trial course of rain-slicked roads, a red, white and black blur of power and efficiency streaking through the gloom.
Miles away from Rio’s Olympic venues, both the iconic and the expensive, miles away from the tourists and the foreign network TV compounds along the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, Cancellara rocketed through one final convincing reminder that he has been the greatest rider of his generation against the clock.
Cancellara recaptured the Olympic Games time trial gold medal he first won eight years earlier in Beijing with a ride for the ages, covering the 33.9-mile course Wednesday in 1 hour, 12 minutes, 15.42 seconds, an average speed of 28.1 MPH over steep climbs, treacherous descents and often ragged and slippery pavement.
“Fabian was absolutely flying,” Tom Dumoulin of the Netherlands said of Cancellara, who is retiring at the end of this season.
In just one of many measures of Cancellara’s dominance Wednesday, Dumoulin captured the silver medal with a time 47.41 seconds slower than the gold medalist. Or consider that Great Britian’s Chris Froome, the recent winner of his third Tour de France, rode to the bronze medal, but was more than a minute (1:02.12) behind the Swiss rider.
“Fabian was the strongest rider out on the road today,” Froome said.
Few if any riders in history have been stronger in the time trial, what cyclists call the race of truth. But Wednesday’s career-crowning moment was also a testament to the resilience and courage of a man his rivals and fans call Spartacus.
Cancellara’s road to the start house Wednesday morning was even more trying than the two-loop course over a rugged stretch of Rio’s coastline. He earned the maillot jaune, the leader’s yellow jersey, after the second stage of last year’s Tour de France. A day later Cancellara was involved in a massive crash, suffering two fractured vertebrae in his lower back and was forced to abandon the tour.
Weeks later Cancellara had to abandon the Vuelta a Espana also after the third stage with a stomach ailment that also kept him out of the world championships in Richmond, Virginia later that fall.
But Cancellara, 35, was determined to leave the sport on his own terms and as a champion.
“This was the last time to try and win an Olympic medal,” a visibly moved Cancellara said. “It means so much after missing out on gold in London (in 2012) and all the ups and downs I’ve had since then. This is just amazing to win the gold today. To leave the sport with the gold medal is just a perfect way to end my career.”
It is a career best measured not against his peers but history.
Cancellara perhaps never got his proper due riding in the shadow of the never-ending series of doping scandals that landed the sport on the front pages on both sides of the Atlantic. While he wore the yellow jersey in six different Tour de France events, the power that made Cancellara so successful in the time trial or Europe’s great one-day races never translated to the sport’s multi-stage tours.
Cancellara is high on any short list of the greatest all-time one-day riders not named Eddy Merckx. He won seven times in the so called “Monuments,” the sport’s five most prestigious one-day races, taking both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix three times. He is the only rider since 1992 to win Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo.
Cancellera might be the best in time trials. Period.
He won a time trial or prologue in six tours. Cancellara won four world championship time trial titles between 2006 and ‘10. Perhaps only a crash in the ‘12 Olympic road race that left him banged up prevented Cancellara from defending his time trial gold medal in London. In his six Olympic and World time trial triumphs, Cancellara’s average margin of victory has been 63.37 seconds.
Those number might raise red flags with some, especially given cycling’s chemically enhanced history, but similar warning signs have not been found in the sport’s science.
L’Equipe, the French sports daily, reported in 2011 on the details of a leaked doping study by the UCI, cycling’s worldwide governing body. The study examined blood samples taken from 198 riders in the 2010 Tour de France and compared them to blood parameters for those riders dating as far back as 2008. UCI officials then divided into 11 levels, 10 to 0, 10 being the level given to rider most suspected of doping. Cancellara was placed in Level 0.
Wednesday Cancellara put the race out of reach by the third time check point at 21.4 miles, already building a 32-second lead over Spain’s Nicolas Castroviejo, who ended up fourth.
“Forty-seven seconds is a lot,” Dumoulin said. “Too much for me today. He was much better than Chris or me. It’s not like you miss a corner (and lose a few seconds). He was just a lot better than the two of us.”
When Froome, who started last among the 35 riders, crossed the finish line, Cancellara, sitting in a tent not far from the finish line, buried his face in his hands and began sobbing.
“I did my warm-up in front of a (portable) generator, and I didn’t even notice it because I was in my own world,” he said.
More than a hour, more than 33 miles later he still was. The rain picked up, but Cancellara seemed unaware.
“Where did this turn into a gold medal, surprising or not, I don’t know?” he said. “I just put 16 years of experience on the table. It was a perfect day to make history.”
