Time trial gold medal for Primož Roglič

Primož Roglič has had Vuelta a España title consolation prizes over the last couple of seasons after being unable to win the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France. But this season, Roglič, having dropped out of the Tour following bad crashes, earned his greatest consolation prize by winning the gold medal in the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games time trial. Roglič’s Jumbo-Visma teammate Tom Dumoulin completed his 2021 season comeback with his second consecutive Olympic time trial silver medal , while Aussie Rohan Dennis took bronze. Hugo Houle, who sat on the hot seat for over an hour with a time of 57:56, placed 13th.

The Course

The men would be doing two 22-km laps of the Fuji Motor Speedway, a rolling route with two hills: Shibanta, a 5.4 km climb of 6.2 percent with a difficult final 500 metres, and the pit lane climb, 1.4 km of 5.6 percent. There were five intermediate time checks along the 44.2 km course.

Canada’s Hugo Houle was the seventh to start. Could he improve on his 21st from Rio 2016?

The 39 riders were divided into three groups, with a 38-minute gap between the sets. Houle set all the best intermediate time checks of the first wave and sat on the hot seat with 57:56.

After the second wave, Houle sat in 4th place, surpassed by Rigoberto Uran (57:19), Remco Evenepoel (57:21), and Alberto Bettiol (57:38).

The third wave contained a lot of the heavy hitters, and after all 13 riders went through the first intermediate check, Ganna had the best time of 12:56. But it was very close.

#CyclingRoad – Recap of first intermediate:

– Ganna
– Rolgic +1"
– Dumoulin +3"
– Van Aert +4"
– Dennis + 7"
– Cavagna 8"
– Kung +9"
– Bettiol +18"#LFRLive #Tokyo2020

— La Flamme Rouge (@laflammerouge16) July 28, 2021

Ganna started to lose time to Roglič, but had the same mark as Tom Dumoulin at the third intermediate check. Dumoulin cracked Uran’s time by 1:06, and Roglič in turn cracked the Dutchman by 1:01 and then kept going as if he was unsure of where the finish line was. Stefan Küng missed the bronze by 0.4 seconds.

Houle’s place is the third best Canadian men’s time trial result after Frank Brown’s fifth in Stockholm 1912 and Svein Tuft’s seventh in Beijing 2008. There were no time trials from 1928 to 1992.

Tokyo 2021 Summer Olympic Games Men’s Time Trial
Gold: Primož Roglič (Slovenia) 55:05
Silver: Tom Dumoulin (The Netherlands) +1:01
Bronze: Rohan Dennis (Australia) +1:03
13) Hugo Houle (Canada) +2:52