Cancellara wins Olympic time-trial; British take over on the track

Chris Froome couldn't repeat what Bradley Wiggins done four years ago in London by following up a Tour de France victory with an Olympic gold in the individual time-trial. Froome had to settle for third behind Fabian Cancellara, who brings the curtain down on his glittering career in style, with Tom Dumoulin, the pre-race favourite, settling for silver. In the woman's race there was a turn up for the books as American, Kristin Armstrong (no relation!), who has done little racing this year, showed up and beat the controversial Russian, Olga Zabelinskaya to silver, and Anna Van Der Breggen to bronze. The Dutchgirl picked up her second medal of these games on the road after her gold last week in the woman's road race.

Fabian Cancellara will have been a popular winner here in Rio. He's been on one big final season farewell Tour, or so it has seemed though things haven't often gone as planned. His crown of classic king was taken by Peter Sagan when the Slovak beat him at the Tour of Flanders, he was well beaten by younger men like Dumoulin in many of the individual time-trials and perhaps he was beginning to think he'd left it a year too long to say goodbye. Or maybe not. Maybe deep down he knew he had this in him and it was everyone else who had written him off. Despite his pedigree for the race of truth, many didn't feel Cancellara was up to winning a medal, never mind the gold. But he was a force throughout the cross, measuring his effort to perfection and finishing a mighty 47sec ahead of Dumoulin and 1min 2sec ahead of Froome across the rolling 54.6km course.

Armstrong's win was closer on the 29.9km course, finishing just 6sec ahead of Zabelinskaya and 11sec ahead of Van Der Breggen. Canadian Tara Witten was 7th at 35sec.

With the road asepct of cycling at these games complete, we moved indoor for the track program. Six days of racing sure to thrill with high expectations on the British contingent. At the time of writing on Monday, August 15, we're into the fifth day and thus far Great Britain are not letting themselves down. So far they have won gold in both the men's and woman's team pursuits, with world records to boot; gold in the men's individual sprint via Jason Kenny; and gold in the men's team sprint, including Kenny again. There have been silvers in both the Men's and woman's individual sprints for Callum Skinner (who also got a gold in that team sprint) and Becky James, with Katy Marchant of Team GB in bronze.

In on-going events, Mark Cavendish is well on his way to a medal in the men's Omnium, and likewise Laura Trott is expected to medal in the woman's Omnium. That will leave the Keiren and both Jason Kenny and Becky James will race respectively. Kenny with two goals to his name so far will look to add a third in these games and if he does he would level Chris Hoy for the most gold medals by a British athlete. At 28 years of age, Kenny would have two more Olympics in him before he even raced the age of Hoy at his last gold, so the potential is there, if the ambition continues to burn, to double his current haul.

Another highly decorated British athlete is, of course, Wiggins. He was one of just four in the team pursuit, but when it was required he made some mammoth pulls to either push the team to a new World record in the semi-finals, or to overhaul a flying Australian team in the final and push the record out further. Also in that team was Ed Clancy, who himself won his third goal (all in successive Olympics in this event), Steven Burke, with his second gold, and Owain Doull, with his first.

So far then, of the six medal events completed, the Great Britain team have won six of them with only Kristina Vogel of Germany (woman's individual sprint) and China (woman's team sprint) breaking their domination.

Thoughts then next time on how the track program finished up, as well as how things went in the mountain biking next weekend.

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Rider of the week:

I know that we shouldn't completely single out one rider from a pursuit team, but when it's Bradley Wiggins who four years ago was winning the Tour de France and the time-trial won this year by Cancellara, and has since transformed himself back to a track rider and who put forth an epic pull in the later stages to ensure the GB team overcame the Australians to take what would be his fifth Olympic gold, as well as the World Record, I can't not give it to him.