London 2012 Olympics: Lizzie Armitstead's silver in the road race will ignite the Games mind that Lizzie Armitstead could not quite deliver the final perfect
line on the Mall. Her silver medal ride in the women’s road race will not be
forgotten by any of the hundreds of thousands who lined the streets all the
way from the Mall into the country lanes of London suburbia and up into the
Surrey hills. For this felt like the lighting of a second flame, the moment
that will properly ignited these Games.
The opening ceremony was wonderful but this was what the whole festival is
truly all about; magnificent, compelling sport from the moment the 66-strong
field set off at high noon to the point three and-a half hours later when it
took a great athlete like Holland’s Marianne Vos to outsprint both
Yorkshire’s gritty Armitstead and Russian Olga Zabelinskaya in a stupendous
finale.
Who said the rain could put a dampener on Britain’s Games? Never mind those
empty seats in all the other venues; we know how to enjoy the greatest free
show on earth, even when it is careering down.
Once again, the supporters lined up five or six deep along the roads and the
drama was unrelenting. They witnessed crashes, punctures, riders negotiating
floods and countless thrilling attacks; and they saw the scintillating
British effort that they had hoped would have brought rewards the previous
day in the equivalent men’s race.
They saw rather more unsung British heroines at work, women worth saluting.
Nicole Cooke, the defending champion, may have had to surrender her crown
but she still knuckled down behind in the peloton to help disrupt its rhythm
and ensure Armitstead would remain in the shake up for the medals up ahead
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