Cycling at the 2004 Summer Olympics – Men's individual road race
Men's Road Race at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
In a race that showed numerous break away attempts, it wasn't until Paolo Bettini and Sérgio Paulinho broke away from the group with a couple of laps remaining and opened up a comfortable gap on the final lap that an idea of the medal positions could be gained. With the peloton giving up the chase of the leaders, Axel Merckx broke away to open up a sufficient gap for him to take bronze. Bettini out sprinted Paulinho for the gold, finishing in a time of 5 hours 41 minutes and 44 seconds. Among the other pre-race favourites, World Champion Igor Astarloa of Spain crashed on the opening lap, and 2000 Olympic road race champion Jan Ullrich finished among the peloton in 19th place. A number of other top names in the field, including Germany's Andreas Klöden and Russia's Viatcheslav Ekimov, pulled out before the end of the race, presumably with the Time Trial race, to be held four days later, in mind.
Date: 14 August
Start: 12:45Final classification
