How the sport works
Between one to five cyclists represent their country and ride two hundred fifty kilometers. The first cyclist to cross the finish line wins.
As usual, I arrived bright and early with my family to the Mall to get the best seats possible. We had reserved tickets but the seats were first come, first served. Surprisingly, there was hardly anyone in line ahead of us so we had terrific front row seats just ten meters from the start/finish line.
Each of the one hundred thirty seven cyclists had to officially sign in, so everyone stood on a small platform, either individually or with their teammates, to sign and pose for photos.
Canada's Ryder Hesjedal.
Uzbekistan's Sergey Lagutin and Muradjan Khalmuratov.
Countries were called to the starting line one by one, with Great Britain, Italy, and Spain spanning the width of the start line. Prince Charles and Camilla came out to greet them and, more than likely, to say good luck to Great Britain's gold medal contender, Mark Cavendish.
It took several minutes to call all of the countries to the starting line, so it was pretty amusing to watch the cyclists yawn sleepily, drink Coke, and chat with each other as they waited.
Once the race started, we had over five hours of waiting until they returned to the finish line so the majority of the crowd abandoned their seats to wander around. My brother and I took the opportunity to move down to the street level where we would be even closer to the cycling…in five hours!
Meanwhile we listened to race updates over the loudspeaker. Whenever the announcer mentioned Uzbekistan's Sergey Lagutin, I yelled my support for him in Uzbek which, my family assured me, earned me some funny looks from the other remaining spectators. The emcee interviewed the sister of Australia's Stuart O'Grady, who was sitting in the next section over. We did a lot of people watching with so much time to kill and spotted Mark Cavendish's girlfriend sitting just one or two rows behind my family.
Since the cyclists weren't coming through anytime soon, the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace carried on as usual. I hadn't seen that since I was probably twelve years old!
When the cyclists did come through almost six hours after they started, no one had predicted the result. Kazakhstan's Vinokurov (nicknamed Vino) and Colombia's Uran had made a breakaway and were sprinting the final few hundred meters with all their might! Uran made the fatal mistake of riding straight down the center of the street, meaning he had to look over both shoulders to see where Vino was. This cost him precious seconds and allowed Vino to slip by Uran in a blazing sprint. Vino gritted his teeth and rode off to the gold medal.
A group of around twenty cyclists finished about eight seconds later, with young American Taylor Phinney taking fourth and Uzbekistan's Sergey Lagutin coming in an impressive fifth place.
The medal ceremony happened not too long after. This was probably the only time in my life I'll hear the Kazakh national anthem live!
Medal results
Gold: Alexandre Vinokurov, Kazakhstan
Silver: Rigoberto Uran, Colombia
Bronze: Alexander Kristoff, Norway
