Austrian Kiesenhofer pulls off women’s road race Games upset

OYAMA, Japan (AP) — Anna Kiesenhofer finally figured out a way to beat the powerhouse Dutch team in the women’s Olympic road race.

Make them forget you’re even there.

The relatively unknown mathematician from Austria got into an early breakaway Sunday, then built a gap so big that the rest of the field failed to remember she was out ahead of them. So when Annemiek van Vleuten escaped the peloton in the final kilometers, she threw her arms in the air thinking she had delivered a gold medal for the Netherlands.

“I thought I had won,” van Vleuten said as she came to grips with reality.

So did everyone else in the race. Britain’s Lizzie Deignan, who was in the main group at the end, told the BBC immediately afterward: “The best person won the bike race here today. Annemiek was clearly the strongest so, you know, shout out to her.”

There are no radios allowed at the Olympics, like there are at professional races, and that makes it difficult to know where riders stand on the road. But it became clear from the lack of urgency in the peloton to chase Kiesenhofer down at the end of a long, brutally hot day in the saddle that they simply forgot that she was there.

It was another crushing disappointment for the 38-year-old van Vleuten, a former world champion. She was leading five years ago in Rio before a horrific crash on a sharp descent left her with a concussion and three fractured bones in her lower back.

Elisa Longo Borghini of Italy won a sprint for bronze Sunday as the rest of the field chased her across the line.

Kiesenhofer’s curriculum vitae features more academic accomplishments than cycling ones: a degree from the Technical University of Vienna, studies at Cambridge and a doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. In fact, she does not even have a professional contract this season, and she was entered in the Olympic road race without a teammate.

None of it mattered.

Kiesenhofer held her arms in triumph — just as van Vleuten would minutes later — as she crossed the finish before a crowd of several thousand fans. Then she toppled to the asphalt — face crusted in sweat — and fought back tears at the realization she had won Austria’s first cycling medal since Adolf Schmal at the first Summer Olympics in 1896.

Tight COVID-19 controls that have kept fans from seeing most of the Olympics in person do not apply to the Shizuoka Prefecture, which meant thousands turned out for the second consecutive day to watch the racing at the old Formula 1 circuit.

Dutifully wearing masks, they lined the barricades from the start at Musashinonomori Park. They hiked up the two climbs through scorching Japanese summer heat to watch the riders pass. And they filled a long, double-decker grandstand on the finishing straightaway at Fuji International Speedway to await their dash for the line.

The German team controlled the early stages of the race, trying to protect Lisa Brennauer, but all eyes were on the four-woman Dutch team — van Vleuten, 2012 Olympic champion Marianne Vos, reigning gold medalist Anna van der Breggen and young standout Demi Vollering — as the peloton rolled through the hilly countryside.

The problems began for the Dutch in the middle stages of the race.

Van Vleuten had a mechanical issue that resulted in a bike change, forcing Vos to drop back and help pace her teammate into the field. As soon as they arrived, Danish rider Emma Cecilie Joergensen hit the deck and van Vleuten locked up her back wheel and rode right into her, leaving their bikes tangled on the tarmac.

The attacks began to fly with 60 kilometers left in the 137-kilometer journey southwest of Tokyo.

Vollering went first. Van der Breggen took a shot. Then, recovered from her earlier spill, van Vleuten charged away as the peloton continued to climb, putting in a big effort that forced the peloton to work together to bring her back.

Nobody brought back Kiesenhofer, though.

She left breakaway companions Omer Shapira of Israel and Anna Plichta of Poland before reaching the speedway, then held a gap of five minutes as she crossed the start-finish line for the closing circuit. But despite more attacks from the field and a rapidly increasing tempo, Kiesenhofer kept her head down and concentrated solely on herself.

“I didn’t know there was still a rider ahead,” van der Breggen said. “I thought we were riding for gold.”

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