Olympic Road Race 2012

The road

At the start

No radios, five riders, nine Box Hills

Two hundred and fifty kilometres out of The Mall and back to it, with nine laps of a fifteen-kilometre circuit over Box Hill in between: Zig Zag Road at four to six per cent, which will not drop a sprinter alone and might on the ninth time of asking. There are no race radios and the biggest team has five riders, not nine. Britain have Cavendish in the rainbow jersey and, six days after Paris, Wiggins to ride for him.

How it was won

1. 1111 km to go

   Fifth time up Box Hill

   Nibali and Gilbert attack again, and this time what goes with them is frightening: Boom, Fuglsang, Chavanel, Rast, Grivko, Terpstra, Paolini, Bauer and Taylor Phinney. A hundred kilometres from The Mall, Mark Cavendish's gold medal is suddenly hanging by a thread.

2. 295 km to go

   One minute fifteen, and only Britain chasing

   There is a short conversation between Wiggins and Millar and then the expected answer: the British team goes to the front and stays there. Over the top of the sixth climb the Nibali group is 1:15 down and the peloton another forty-five seconds behind that. Five riders are being asked to control a two-hundred-and-fifty-kilometre race.

3. 364 km to go

   Belgium have three men up the road

   Gilbert sets the pace at the foot of the penultimate climb and Fuglsang takes over from him at the top; with three Belgians in the move there is no reason for any of them to help behind. By the summit Britain have hauled the gap under a minute, and that is the best it will ever look.

4. 449 km to go

   Gilbert attacks for the last time

   Ninth and final ascent, the last chance saloon, and the attacks come one after another. Gilbert goes with real purpose and pushes the lead back out towards a minute; the break splinters across the road; and the riders who bridge up on this climb arrive at the front with fresh legs, which is the worst news of the day for the sprinters.

5. 525 km to go

   Wiggins on the front, Froome cracking

   Six days after winning the Tour de France, Bradley Wiggins drags the peloton across Surrey himself. Chris Froome is the first of the British riders to go; Cancellara shifts Rast and Schär up to help, then thinks better of it. With twenty-five kilometres left the gap has gone the wrong way, to 1:05.

6. 610 km to go

   Vinokourov and Urán jump

   With ten kilometres to go the leaders finally believe it, and the moment they do the cooperation ends. Alexandre Vinokourov — thirty-eight years old, in the last season of his career — goes first, and Rigoberto Urán is the only one quick enough to take his wheel.

7. 7At the line

   The Mall, and a glance over the wrong shoulder

   Two men come down The Mall alone with Buckingham Palace behind them and a crowd twenty deep on both sides. Three hundred metres out Urán looks back over his left shoulder — and Vinokourov, sitting on his right, is gone before the Colombian's head has turned back. He rides to the line with his arms wide and his mouth open, an Olympic champion in the last summer of a career nobody expected to end like this. Kristoff takes bronze eight seconds later; Greipel leads what is left of the peloton in half a minute after that.

The result