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2020...2021 Olympic Women's Road Race, Tokyo, 137 KM

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Again, do you really think the guys in the cars, in the feeding zones, along the road didn't know how many are out front?
If they are not able to communicate this to their riders it's their own fault.
Other teams obviously were aware of the fact that Kiesenhofer was still up front

What I really found a bit sad - at the finish line Kiesenhofer was standing all alone by herself, none of the other riders came to congratulate or even give her any sign of appreciation.
Ludwig was over as soon as she realised what happened
 
I think it was more about the time gaps than about the # of riders. According to Van der Breggen they were given time gaps to the 2 chasers instead of the leader so they thought they had plenty of time to close the gap. Apparently they could have done a bit more to bring her back if they knew the true time gap.
 
True but she was the only one. And thats indeed sad and actually quite bad behavior from the others.
Yup, the question has to be how much is disbelief and how much is resentment. Nevertheless even if it was absolutely 100% on the organisers, you can't take that out on Kiesenhofer, it wasn't her fault.

I mean, I can readily believe that if they even saw Kiesenhofer there at the end they thought she might have climbed off after being dropped, because they didn't expect another rider to be there. But then when people haven't seen or haven't clocked breakaways we've seen people ride completely blinkered, like Danilo Hondo celebrating a 3rd place in a Giro stage because they didn't realise they hadn't brought the break back - which was fine if it was just Matty Lloyd a minute up the road, but Rubens Bertogliati was rolling in for 2nd literally a few metres in front of Hondo and he still did the full celebration. I would expect that for quite a few riders who thought they were contesting medals, even if they saw Kiesenhofer and the media scrum around the unexpected gold medalist, they wouldn't have registered what it meant.
 
Dutch coach:

"Miscommunication all over the place. Their head start got too big, but our riders didn't know. They also didn't know there was still someone upfront. I couldn't inform them and also from the road that wasn't possible."
 
If Annemiek would have had a PhD in mathematics, she would have maybe known that catching two out of a break of three is not enough.

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So the organizational side was bad, but if you have three riders in front from the beginning you should be able to realize you only passed two of them. That's a number even I would be able to manage. It's not like... oh, ***, there were 13 out front and we only caught 12...
And when van Vleuten celebrated like that in the end it just comes down to that, they didn't realize there was another one left, no matter the time gaps.
My, yes, you have to keep track of these things when you are without radios...
 

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