Great Race!

... Rebellin Good… Tony… Out of NOWHERE … pulled up on sheer guts from 30+ seconds back in the last 2k

is that an Olympic thing?

... I just ran out of beer :)

i don’t get it …

... very nice to see…

already has his gold medal listed in his palmares.

Tony’s on the hoods in the saddle sprinting style. Maybe some thing he can work on in the off-season.

appears to be calling everyone in Spain personally – although I certainly can’t blame him (darn, if I rephrased that a bit better I could have used ‘certo”)

under the damn wall and up a bit? jeepers.

“Yes… Congratulations to my team mate Sanchez… I, and my sparkling YELLOW JERSEY congratulate him on winning in a country that has a Red and YELLOW Flag… good job Sammy… well done in a place NOT CALLED FRANCE”

I’m off to bed. Fantastic race.!!!! Thanks all for the fun!

... don’t count on seeing me in the Vuelta Burgos thread in four hours :)

Thanks to ya’ll for a great race! Wouldn’t want to hang with anyone else!
I’m now off to sleep before getting up to watch it again on tv.

Hey – where is everyone?

Spain rules the world.

Man, he’s the Italian Ekimov, just keeps on ticking at an advanced age.

Good for all 3 of them, they look truly happy. And I’m glad Sammy got something out of this season.

(Performance Enhancing Beer)

I’ll be reading them when I get off work tonight and testing for PEBs. Any irregularities will be severely punished (unless they’re funny of course).

just woke up to a VDS double

who made it through the night. just rising here and checking reports – looks like it was worth staying up for! i don’t give a damn who won – so much great work by alot of riders :)

but they were just too obsessed with each other in the climb

All fo the flags and ribbons and uniforms – so brilliant. Not murky looking as it was online.

From cyclingnews:

The Olympic road race course, like most cycling events, was to be free access for most of the route allowing fans to catch a glimpse of their countrymen or favourites without having to purchase a ticket. Yet when cycling enthusiasts and even family members of riders tried to get into the venue, they were turned back by Chinese security.

Maybe I should stick to predicting cave diving results. Bah. Good job to the podium. Thought for sure Cancelerra was going to do one of his monster pulls past the entire field when he came across at 3k.

I thought I would be patient and watch the race unfold on NBC to find out who won. Problem was, I noticed that as Lampley said, “coming up later, the conclusion of the cycling road race,” they showed Sanchez receiving the medal in a small collage screen behind him. Way to kill whatever suspense may have been there NBC.

Someone remarked that the finish was too steep and that’s why Cancellara ended up with Bronze… are you kidding me?, he shouldn’t have even been there. It’s a testament of the power of this freak of nature known as Spartacus that he was even there to contest the finish.

was out of town until this afternoon, camping with no internet or TV until last night way late … so my coverage was a few clips on CBC last night before going to bed (pretty useless out of context, I think Clara Hughes (2004 women’s RR bronze) is too far removed from cycling as neither she nor Mark Connolly could ID any rider other than Hesjedal it seemed – loved the line by Connolly “I’ve waited three Olympics to be able to say that a Canadian is leading the men’s Olympic cycling road race” – the sad part is that most probably got their hopes up and didn’t realize about sharing the work in a breakaway or that the breakaway usually gets caught) ... then there was the ticker on the CBC Newsworld this morning so I knew Barry was 9th and heard that “the Spaniard Sanchez” won (and I’m thinking, which Sanchez, I’m not sure who’s riding?) ... then we saw more middle of the race coverage on Radio-Canada this morning (French CBC) where they actually have cycling-knowledgable commentators who could name the riders ;-).

And tonight, I watched the all the live bits that CBC had on last night in between their main story of Kyle Shewfelt’s amazing comeback from injury (2004 gold medallist in floor exercise, broke both legs last fall) ... couldn’t believe how often Hughes mentioned that the Canadians were well-positioned and eating and drinking lots, surely there was something else she could think of to say – perhaps she’s forgotten all her cycling strategy now that she’s a speed skater. They showed a bit at 10 km, then went back to men’s gymnastics qualifying and did a split screen showing a Canadian’s bar routine on the left and the last 250 m of the RR on the right- lol.

So, I did then watch the NBC coverage from earlier today that I’d taped – Paul and Craig were better than the Canadian commentators I thought, but even that was dumbed down even more than on Versus for the TdF (ie. explaining “peloton”). But at least I got to see the actual finish, even the lead-up to the finish.

Haven’t read much afterwards yet about the race (ie rider comments, analysis) ... sounded from Evans’s website that his role was to help set up Rogers which he seemed to have done well, Rogers just didn’t seem to have much left at the end. And yay for Mike Barry!!! I’m sure a top 10 finish helps in the quest for further cycling funding in Canada (which reminds me, the ads on the Canadian coverage made it really obvious where all the sports sponsorship is going in this country these days – winter sports/Vancouver 2010 – any Olympic sponsor ads showing actual athletes showed winter sports athletes! the 2 I saw were a figure skater and a XC skier).