Richard’s Gold for Ecuador

On July 24, as part of the Tokyo Olympic Games, the cycling road race was held, in which the outstanding Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz celebrated the greatest victory of his career!

 

 

Over 234 kilometers, with a total of 4,800 meters of climbing, in extremely tough climatic conditions, the race followed the classic script: right at the start a stable breakaway group formed, posing no threat at all to the favorites. The first serious attack on a climb, 37 kilometers from the finish, was launched by the Slovenian Tadej Pogačar, who came to the Olympics as the reigning winner of the French Grand Tour. Naturally, the peloton could not let a top favorite of such rank go, and so it was. On the other hand, when the American Brandon McNulty attacked 25 kilometers from the finish, the group of favorites, considerably thinned out by Tadej’s attack, let him go with the traditional looking-at-each-other — but not all of them. Knowing his own sprinting abilities at the finish, even from a small group, the Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz, winner of the 2019 Italian Grand Tour, decided to chase Brandon. Richard had studied the peculiarities of the 234-kilometer Olympic course well. He joined the American, and the two riders quickly found common ground. The American has an excellent individual pace, while the Ecuadorian, born in Carchi province, rode his bike to school at 3,000 meters above sea level and feels on a climb like a fish in water. The escapees divided their roles accordingly. Not even a week had passed since the Ecuadorian had stood on the podium of the French Grand Tour; there he had been in the rising phase of his form, he did not try to achieve the impossible, and in Tokyo, as riders say, “he had the legs”!

 

 

He had the legs, and on the finishing climb at the Fuji Speedway he noticeably upped the pace; the American was dropped, and as it turned out, this was Richard’s golden attack!

 

 

The sprint of the main group of favorites was only for the podium, and two mega-stars of modern cycling stepped onto it!

 

 

The second step went to the Belgian Wout van Aert, who on July 18 had won the sprint of the prestigious French Tour on the Champs-Élysées. It’s worth noting that at the recent Tour, besides the sprint, Wout won two more completely different stages: the individual time trial and the queen mountain stage with a double ascent of the legendary Mont Ventoux. The simultaneous king of the Champs-Élysées and Mont Ventoux — something extremely rare — had to settle for silver in Tokyo. That’s his lot: no one ever wants to take him to the finish, which is also why he had to be content with silver at the 2020 World Championships.

The third step went to the Slovenian Tadej Pogačar, who on that same July 18 had won the prestigious general classification of the French Tour for the second consecutive time in his career. The main classification aside, Tadej did not hold back on individual stages either — he too won three at the recent Tour. I won’t dwell here on these two riders’ other achievements.

 

 

It’s worth noting that this was only the second Olympic gold in Ecuador’s history. Before that, back in Atlanta in 1996, the legendary race walker Jefferson Leonardo Pérez Quezada, a participant in five Olympic Games, brought his homeland its first gold in the 20-kilometer walk. Later, however, also in Tokyo, Neisi Patricia Dajomes Barrera won the women’s weightlifting up to 76 kilograms and gave Ecuador its third Olympic gold!

 

 

Featured image: ROBERTO and LUCA BETTINI/www.bettiniphoto.net

Inside post thumbnail image: ROBERTO and LUCA BETTINI/www.bettiniphoto.net

 

Special thanks to the Italian photographers ROBERTO and LUCA BETTINI for permission to use their watermarked works in our publications.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translated from Georgian with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic), reviewed by the Velorbola editors.