Greig Leach

All during the women's road race the cameras kept catching rainbows appearing while the rains pelted the women's peloton. Today the sun shone all day, but then that is not the rainbow that has left this quartet. Instead it is the rainbow bands of the world champion that have ridden out of their grasp at the end of the 270 kilometers of racing. Pascal Eenkhoorn (Netherlands), Mauro Schmid (Switzerland), Mattias Skjelmose (Denmark) and Lorenzo Rota (Italy) had seen both Alexey Lutsenko and Remco Evenepoel ride away from them. They didn't have the legs to go with either rider. Lutsenko was still up the road, so the best these four could hope for was to race for the bronze medal. In the end, their race fell even further apart. They managed to catch Lutsenko, but then slowed down too much as they each watched the other not wanting to be the one to be on the front of the group in the final kilometers. They were caught by the chasers, and all hopes of even being on the podium evaporated in an instant.