Evenepoel wins Olympic gold, heartbreak for Tarling, Mullen very strong | Video

Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) shook of his post-Tour de France fatigue to emerge the clear winner of the men’s Olympic TT in Paris. He topped the podium from Filippo Ganna, by 15 seconds after the Italian came back strong in the final part of the course.

Indeed, Ganna denied Belgium a 1-2 as he pushed Wout van Aert – the eternal podium finisher on big days – who took the bronze medal some 25 seconds down on Evenepoel. Ireland’s Ryan Mullen was a very solid 12th.

The biggest loser of the day was Josh Tarling; the young British rider close to tears during his post-race interview after suffering a front wheel puncture.

That meant he had to stop for a change of bike and in the end was just two seconds off bronze, 12 seconds off silver and 27 seconds off gold. He surely would have been 2nd, and perhaps would have pushed Evenpoel for the gold, but for the mechanical.

From an Irish perspective, Mullen put in a strong ride to finish just outside the top 10. He placed 12th at 1:45 and was just two seconds off Denmark’s Mikkel Bjerg, who rounded out the top 10 on a sodden day in Paris.

Though the men’s test was did not witness the same series of crashes as the women’s race earlier in the day, there were still several falls.

And one of those was Australia’s Luke Plapp, who had made a big target of this TT. However, he crashed so heavily he remained lying in the road for a long time and was unable to finish the race.

Though the rain continued to hammer down on the 32.4km course through the day, the men’s field clearly had the benefit of seeing all of the crashes in the women’s race. That knowledge – of where the crashes occurred – meant they had an advantage in avoiding hitting the deck.

More to come.