Mount Fuji (Japan) (AFP)
The 30-year-old Austrian, Anna Kiesenhofer, created a huge surprise on Sunday by winning Olympic gold in road cycling, in front of the invincible armada of the Dutch, trapped by a morning breakaway that ... escaped them!
Annemiek van Vleuten, strong out of the group of favorites behind the Olympic champion, brings a silver medal to the Netherlands, 1 min 15 sec from Kiesenhofer.
The bronze goes to another great lady of cycling, the Italian Elisa Longo Borghini, who finished at 1 min 29.
Juliette Labous, the only committed Frenchwoman, remained in the best group until the end, and even managed to get out 10 km from the finish to try to get a medal.
Resumed, she cracked at the very end of the race and finished 30th at 3'22.
Former triathlete, who had to stop the race in 2014 on foot due to an injury, Kiesenhofer was mainly known so far in the peloton for her intellectual qualities: holder of a master's degree in mathematics from Cambridge University, she completed a thesis at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in 2016, then worked for a time as a mathematician.
Her record was modest: Austrian road champion in 2019, and double time trial champion (2019 and 2020).
And only one international victory to date, a prestigious stage of the Tour de l'Ardèche, won on the Mont Ventoux in 2016.
On the Olympic circuit which arrived at the foot of Mount Fuji, on a mountainous course but much less difficult than that of the men the day before, the mathematician has in any case shattered all the calculations of probability.
The Dutch had indeed won the last two Olympic gold medals in London-2012 and Rio-2016, and the last four world championship titles.
Kiesenhofer left the peloton in the very first kilometers of the race, in an eight-woman breakaway thought to be meant only to liven up the race.
But the favorites let the group slip away, until they had a ten-minute lead at the foot of the Kagosaka pass, the last difficulty.
One by one, the Austrian's breakaway companions gave up, and she found herself alone in the lead about thirty kilometers from the finish.
With the gold medal in her sights, she resisted all the counterattacks of the favorites.
Van Vleuten, silver medalist, at 38, took a great revenge on the Olympic bad luck.
In 2016 in Rio, she was in the lead and was heading for the gold medal when she suffered a terrifying fall on the last descent, 10 km from the finish.
Remained unconscious for a moment, she had suffered a concussion and fractures of three vertebrae, and the emergency services had even feared for her life.
His second place will not however console the Dutch team, completely trapped.
© 2021 AFP