Race was OK, as Yaco said though, would have been way better with trade teams, as van Vleuten would have gone after van der Breggen and then they would not have collaborated potentially allowing ELB/Lizzie/Cille back, and then ELB/Lizzie being teammates would have introduced a new dynamic.
Decent phase in the middle, but once Anna was gone she was gone and the race for gold was over. The nature of the course meant that nobody believed in attacking for silver on the penultimate climb, and the latter one was way too late to stand any chances of catching Anna. Once Cille and Lizzie were dropped I think it set the race, because you had two riders in medal position, and then in the group behind only 2 of the 5 could reasonably be expected to work; it was then a 2-on-1 time trial but with ELB being a far better time triallist than either Deignan or Lippert, and Deignan was the only one who really had any justification for working hard in that group, which she dutifully did in fairness, costing her in the sprint where Vos (as predicted) and Lippert (as was an outside chance) then rode away from her in the sprint.
Decent phase in the middle, but once Anna was gone she was gone and the race for gold was over. The nature of the course meant that nobody believed in attacking for silver on the penultimate climb, and the latter one was way too late to stand any chances of catching Anna. Once Cille and Lizzie were dropped I think it set the race, because you had two riders in medal position, and then in the group behind only 2 of the 5 could reasonably be expected to work; it was then a 2-on-1 time trial but with ELB being a far better time triallist than either Deignan or Lippert, and Deignan was the only one who really had any justification for working hard in that group, which she dutifully did in fairness, costing her in the sprint where Vos (as predicted) and Lippert (as was an outside chance) then rode away from her in the sprint.
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