ELB was only a few seconds off the win in the Giro Rosa ITT too, which was very tricky with climbing and descending. With cobbles and short hills, well, she won the Ronde van Vlaanderen solo a couple of years ago!
I generally agree with Jonhard's tipping, I'd say that given the course there's a good chance of Anna VDB being able to double up - she's shown she has strong form, and the inclusion of the two hills will offer her an advantage over many of the more limited TT riders; certainly the riders on the startlist here who can beat Anna for explosivity on the hills are few in number, and for those that potentially could, they're more climbing-biased competitors (Ash, Kasia) who she can easily recoup her losses to - and more - on the flat (neither are poor in the CLM, but Anna's got far more prominent results). Similarly, the more traditional rouleur time triallists such as Linda Villumsen and Ellen van Dijk will be disadvantaged by the climbs; I'd be tempted to include Lisa Brennauer here as well as while she is capable enough on the hills, these ones are also somewhat steeper than the ones we often see in a time trial. However, she will undoubtedly be one of the main threats to the gold. Both Linda and Ellen can, however, put out enough power on the flat that they may well be able to overcome that problem; Ellen was of course very strong on this circuit in the road race.
As was one of the big question marks of the startlist, Kristin Armstrong. Her selection has been a big issue for debate; her second consecutive retirement followed by a couple of years out then a return building up to the Olympics has been an ongoing story. Certainly her preparation could be described as suboptimal, which is why there has been much disgruntlement about her selection. However, her entire comeback is built around this one day, and she's shown in London that she knows what she's doing here, and in the road race she showed she had both form and power. At the same time she's 42 years old, and while some would welcome the feelgood story of the defending champion returning to defeat the odds in the twilight of her career, others would see it as a negative thing that somebody can twice retire, ride domestically only and then win the most important race of them all in their 40s, as it would only serve to accentuate feelings of lack of depth in the bunch. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for Emma Pooley; Emma is not as old as Kristin and the parcours does suit her with those small climbs, but at the same time she has also been retired more recently than Kristin and she isn't the defending champion either. Like Kristin, Emma's whole comeback is geared around this race, however like Kristin she didn't exactly stamp her authority over the roster spot to get here so she will have to really justify that selection.
The USA's other weapon is Evelyn Stevens. Evie Stevie won that Giro TT mentioned earlier when discussing ELB, and is both an excellent climber and the current holder of the hour record; she's a great rider with a great backstory and for whom this may well be her swansong too. However, her surprising anonymity in the road race suggests that there's a possibility she may have expended too much energy in Il Giro to hold her form until now, and that would be a shame as obviously everybody wants the best athletes all at their best. If that was all planned however, she's a dark horse for a medal. To a perhaps lesser extent so too is Germany's second weapon, Trixi Worrack. Trixi was more active than most of the TT candidates in the Road Race, because she's Trixi Worrack and that's what she does, being part of both the van Dijk-Plichta-Bronzini move and the later Vos-PFP move by bridging across both times, so we know she has strength and form, I just think that unless she's on a really good day or others hit problems there may just be too many stronger riders starting for her.
Of the outsiders, once more Amialiusik stands out to me, as a rider who can both go well against the clock, on the flats and on the hills. Katrin Garfoot for Australia is also a very interesting wildcard; she had a very strong start to the season but then has been fairly quiet since. She tried to ride across to the first attack group on the Grumari circuit in the road race, after Worrack and Armstrong had already done the same thing, then gave up and abandoned; whether she didn't go across because she didn't have the form, or she got what she wanted then abandoned earlier and with less energy expended than her TT opposition is another matter. Tara Whitten for Canada is another name that, owing to racing almost entirely in North America, often falls beneath my radar, but the former Nordic skier tends to come good in the big events, although the course does seem too hilly for her in my opinion. The other super dark horse is the notorious pantomime villain Hanna Solovey (her name Russified to Ganna here); having served a doping suspension after one of her first pro races (where her mechanics also got busted allegedly stealing another team's wheels, though they contended it was a prank gone wrong), she returned to the European U23 ITT champs and demolished the field, and got kicked off the Astana team for no-showing training camps and races (she maintains she was being coerced to change nationality to represent Kazakhstan); she's made something of a habit in previous years of racing infrequently but arriving at big competitions in good TT shape, although she had a nightmare on the cobbles in the road race which may be a sign she's not the same threat she was.
Oh, and of course Zabelinskaya, who can climb, who has power, who was very good in Thüringen and who won a bronze medal in London, but who is competing under something of a cloud, is the wrong side of 35 and has had a tumultuous lead-in to the Games as she fought to be cleared to race; what she can do is anyone's guess.
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