The sun was bright but it was cold enough that I could see my breath when I arrived at the start of the Junior Men's road race. Over the next 3 hours, the peloton would ride 7 laps of the same 18.2k circuit used in the Junior Women's and U23 Men's races yesterday.
7 laps to go
Rolling out a few hundred meters after the start.
Uzbekistan had 3 riders participating! (Please don't ask how many of them would finish.)
Unlike the cyclists who had to pedal for the next 27 minutes to approach the finish line, I just had to cut across a field and a mall where I met up the families of 2 American riders to watch the race together. Below: no attacks yet on the completion of the first lap.
The tail end was a bit stretched out.
6 laps to go
The peloton was still together but the Americans wanted to control the tempo so they sent their climber, Adrien Costa, silver medalist in the TT on Tuesday, to the front for the climbs.
Why the grandstands are just opened up for the Junior Men's and Women's races I don't know.
5 laps to go
I'm not sure if Costa was trying to attack or if he just dropped the whole peloton, but he soloed away and it took Kazakhstan's Grigoriy Shtein visible effort to bridge.
The peloton was less than a minute behind.
4 laps to go
The pair continued to work well together and had about 45 seconds on the peloton.
The peloton.
3 laps to go
Shtein was worn out by Costa's pace but the American was joined by a few other riders as a chase group encroached.
The peloton.
2 laps to go
The field had come together again but there seemed to be no end to the attacks.
Last lap! The finish!
Plenty of riders had been dropped or abandoned over the laps, but a pack of more than 30 riders roared up the finishing straight to sprint it out for the rainbow jersey.
I didn't know who he was, but I knew that a German had just claimed victory!
Once the medalists walked onto the stage, I realized I did in fact know him–he and another rider had been on my flight to Madrid on Monday! It's hard to forget such shockingly blond hair.
The podium: 1st Jonas Bokeloh, 2nd Alexandr Kulikovsky, 3rd Peter Lenderink.
The ongoing Nations' Cup series had wrapped up and the winning teams were now called to the stage. Frnace took the victory followed by runners up Denmark and Germany.
