road race......

ok, so the olympic road race was a real disappointment after the 22 days of drama at the tour de france.......the race was done as a criterium....17 laps around a course 8.3 miles long...through downtown athens.....very narrow....very up-and-down.......lots of twists and turns.......curiously...when paola bettini made his move to go out ahead of the pack.......only an unknown portuguese fellow followed him..........and then unknown guy could have won had he just gone ahead and done it rather than spend his time looking back to see if bettini was going to make a move........duh......axel merxx...son of lendendary eddie merxx of belgium...won the bronze simply because he bolted ahead of the pack at the right moment.........the rest of those guys didn't even try to sprint to catch bettini at the end....maybe they lost track of the laps....................or maybe they were just so tired and fed up with riding after the tour that they lacked the killer instinct..................for whatever reason.......only the top three seemed to have any interest in medaling........we watched the tape-delay coverage last night....despite the fact that i knew who won.........knowing who won and knowing how it happened are two different things........i didn't expect the race to have turned out the way i saw it play out..........ah well....................enough of cycling til next july...................