Amateur hour at Olympic road race

The Olympic cycling road race did not live up to the hype that was expected of it. The pre-race favourite Mark Cavendish and team GB were nowhere to be seen when the race concluded. It was expected to be a magnificent sprint finish but the outcome was far from this.

Team GB who consisted of mainly team Sky members, 4 of which won stages in this years Tour de France and was dubbed by Bradley Wiggins as 'the best British cycling team ever assembled'. You would not have thought so from their performance. They were unable to catch the breakaway at any stage of the race and their team dropped off at the end of the race when they were needed the most.

Not to sure what was going through their minds as they were unable to close a gap of 50 seconds from 20 kilometres. What was supposed to be an exciting sprint of the heavyweights turned out to be a dash for the retired as Alexandre Vinokourov took the gold with team GB and Cavendish nowhere to be seen. Fabian Cancellara who was in the breakaway and looked favourite to win made a rookie mistake by going straight into the barrier on a corner. Team GB seemed calm the entire race and even at the end when they needed to close down the gap they didn't up the pace enough.

The coverage of the race was amateur at best with the commentators not knowing who the riders were at times. They were unsure about who got bronze. The camera work seemed to have been done by someone who has never filmed before. If you had turned over to the race you would have thought it was coverage of an amateur cycling event. This is not something you would expect form an Olympics. From watching the Tour which was in depth coverage, it was a very poor showing. Overall it was a poor showing from all parties and a disappointment and frankly a waste of time.