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Former cyclist Johann Lienhart has been banned for 10 years after providing his son, Florian Lienhart, with illegal performance-enhancing substances, according to the Associated Press (via USA Today).
Florian was a professional triathlete who was a two-time Austrian national champion before being caught for doping in 2019. He was officially banned for four years in February.
The Austrian Anti-Doping Legal Committee has since determined Johann not only supplied him with illegal drugs that include EPO, genotropin and testosterone, but the 60-year-old also "encouraged, instructed and supported" his son to cheat.
Johann was a cycling star in his prime, competing at the Summer Olympics in 1980, 1984 and 1988.
The 2016 Olympics' women's road race was an aggressive event from the opening gun, with Anna van der Breggen eventually besting the field over the 87.6-mile trek with a time of three hours, 51 minutes and 27 seconds.
Sprinters chasing to the front and setting the pace defined the event. The riders started at Fort Copacabana and took the oceanside course up through the Grumari Circuit and back, with the dangerous descent causing an unexpected change in the race leader late in the event.
The race truly came down to the final seconds, with Mara Abbott just missing on making history for Team USA. Meanwhile, Emma Johansson of Sweden and Elisa Longo Borghini of Italy secured silver and bronze, respectively.
Here are the medal results from the event, as well as an updated look at the medal standings from Rio so far. The full list of results is available here.
| Place | Athlete | Country | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Anna van der Breggen | Holland | 3:51:27 |
| Silver | Emma Johansson | Sweden | 3:51:27 |
| Bronze | Elisa Longo Borghini | Italy | 3:51:27 |
The early portions of the journey were mostly a show by Lotte Kopecky of Belgium, with Abbott and Marianne Vos of the Netherlands fighting for the lead at times.
A large chunk of the proceedings went to simple energy management and staving off the advances. Unlike the men's race the day before, there weren't any noteworthy crashes before the climb.
The steepest part of the race is where the event changed, with the pair of daunting climbs illustrated by VeloViewer:
Abbott proved she was one of the best climbers in the world no matter how intimidating the above climbs look. She blew away the field on both hills, whittling down the lead group to less than 10 names.
Based on her pre-race comments, according to Cycling News' Kirsten Frattini, Abbot's pushing hard didn't come as much of a surprise:
"It's not success yet," she said. "Making the team is a step. It means you got in the door. But if you get in the door and then don't make anything of the opportunity, then maybe it's not such a success."
Abbott fell behind during the steep descent to Annemiek van Vleuten, but the Holland representative suffered the worst crash of the day in the slick environment, going over her handlebars after locking up on a tight right turn and remaining prone as Abbott and the chase group stormed past.
BBC Sports' Dan Walker provided the critical update:
While she's not known for her flat pushes, Abbot held strong along the beach-side trek late, until the three-person chase party caught her with less than one kilometer left, leaving her without a spot on the podium.
Van der Breggen wound up taking the gold and immediately broke down in tears after having to pass her injured teammate during the descent.
Broadcaster Quentin Hull explained the post-race mood around the team:
"I was pretty shocked about it, I think she crashed hard. I realised I was first in the team and had to chase. We knew we had to do it," Van der Breggen said after the race, according to BBC.
As far as other hopefuls go, Great Britain's Lizzie Armitstead was the biggest story entering the day, her name cast in the spotlight going into Rio for missed drug tests. She hit a major hurdle early on, needing to completely stop for a mechanical issue while teammate Emma Pooley led a sprint up a hill.
Armitstead would catch up to the pack, with Ella CyclingTips describing the fallout:
Armitstead was close to the chase group near the end, but she wound up finishing fifth.
Vos, who entered as the defending champion after a gold medal in 2012, interestingly enough, was the rider cruising next to the team car to get water for the rest of the team before finishing ninth. Cyclist Rachel Neylan joked about the development:
For the United States, the hopes hinged on the strong team of Megan Guarnier, Evelyn Stevens and Abbott. No American had won the race since its debut in 1984 (Connie Carpenter), with Abbot coming up just short at the end.
Van der Breggen, when necessary and despite overwhelming adversity, rose to the occasion at the perfect time—a good summation of the Rio Olympics thus far—with her efforts securing the Netherlands the country's first gold at the Games.
Stats and information courtesy of Rio2016.com.
We're just one day into the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and already we've witnessed one of the biggest disappointments we're set to see in the next fortnight of action.
No, we're not talking about the opening ceremony; it's Team GB's failure in the road race that has left fans deflated.
Chris Froome, the three-time Tour de France winner and reigning champion, failed to podium in the road race alongside any of his Team GB teammates, causing a big upset.
Riding with different partners than who he's used to with the all-conquering Team Sky, there was never any guarantee he would finish up with a gold medal in the road race. But as one of the biggest names on the circuit, his failure is still a big shock.
It's disappointing for him; it's disappointing for neutrals.
When the big events come around, we want to see the biggest and best riders put on a show. We want to see them create a bit of history in the process and live up to their billing.
Froome may have kept up the pace until late, but his failure to finish in the medals means Team GB is getting off to a poorer start at Rio 2016 than many had hoped.
Indeed, when we think of favourites and those we were expecting to see challenge in the road race, victory going to Belgium's Greg Van Avermaet typically would mean other pre-race favourites Alejandro Valverde of Spain and Italy's Vincenzo Nibali were also on the receiving end of a surprise victory.
All in all, none of the powerhouses—Italy, Spain, France and Great Britain—came away with a medal as Jakob Fuglsang (Denmark) and Rafal Majka (Poland) completed the top three positions.
It isn't quite in the territory of "doing a Leicester City," but it is a shock, no less.
The success of the Foxes last season has transcended sport. It's given hope to the underdog and shown that victory in any form can't be taken for granted. Being a name or not comes as no guarantee, and the challenging ascents of Rio proved that.
Van Avermaet is no slouch, though. He has recorded three stage wins at the Tour de France in his career, so doing it as a one-off at the Olympics hasn't exactly meant ardent cycling fans have been falling over themselves with shock.
Seeing Froome tail off late did produce shock, though. That's where the anti-climax kicked in. As thrilling as the race remained to the death, watching such a seasoned campaigner and bankable rider come up short is frustrating.
Froome's failure is akin to when Cristiano Ronaldo suffered heartache at Euro 2016. As dull as the final between Portugal and France proved, the occasion alone made it fraught with tension and nerves. Ronaldo's absence through the injury he picked up early on in the game took some of the gloss away from it.
When Portugal forward Eder proved the surprise match winner, a sense of romanticism remained. With Ronaldo in his place to step up and complete the fairy tale, though, it would have added to the sense of occasion. For neutrals, he was the main attraction, so when he couldn't be there to drag Portugal over the line, the shine was taken off.
Team GB suffered a similar fate in 2012 when Mark Cavendish and the rest failed to take gold at the opening race of their home Olympics. It was left up to Alexandr Vinokurov of Kazakhstan to take road race gold that day, with Cavendish the highest-ranked Brit way back in 29th place, 40 seconds off the pace.
Froome was 109th in the 2012 road race, so finishing 12th this year is a marked improvement. Geraint Thomas was one place ahead of him in Rio as the best-placed team GB rider, finishing in 11th.
British cycling legend Chris Boardman told BBC Sport that Froome and his teammates should be proud of how they approached the race:
That was the best Olympic road race I have seen from the British team, so hats off to them. They gave themselves plenty of options rather than concentrating on one rider, and used them superbly. All five rode a tough course fantastically well and I was really impressed by how they managed their resources.
It's just a shame it wasn't followed up with a medal to mark the progress British cycling continues to enjoy. After all, when we get this far, it's the medals that count. And right now, Froome doesn't have one.
All is not lost for him in Rio, of course, as he races in the individual time trial on Wednesday. He won bronze in that event in 2012, and Sir Bradley Wiggins took the top prize of gold.
Suffering in the road race, a man of Froome's reputation can't afford another disappointment so soon after.
The second medal event of the 2016 Olympics saw Belgium's Greg Van Avermaet take home gold in the men's 150-mile road race with a time of six hours, 10 minutes and five seconds, just ahead of Denmark's Jakob Fuglsang.
This race looked like it would end well for a group of about six cyclists, including Sergio Henao and Vincenzo Nibali, but a late crash completely turned the tide on how things played out.
Here are the medal results from the men's road race, as well as an updated look at the medal standings from Rio so far.
| Medal | Racer | Country | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Greg Van Avermaet | Belgium | 6:10.05 |
| Silver | Jakob Fuglsang | Denmark | 6:10.05 |
| Bronze | Rafal Majka | Poland | 6:10.10 |
This was a race full of drama, notably involving crashes. The biggest one occurred with about six miles remaining. Henao and Nibali wiped out in the lead group, opening the door for Rafal Majka to get out front for a brief period.
Cycling Hub TV provided an image from the crash that sent Henao and Nibali down:
Majka was looking at a bit of poetic redemption, as Cycling Hub TV also pointed out:
Instead, he ran out of gas after getting passed by Van Avermaet and Fuglsang. He didn't even attempt to make a late push for the silver medal because of his apparent exhaustion.
Van Avermaet sprinted to the top of the leaderboard with less than five miles remaining and turned on the jets to hold off a late surge by Fuglsang. CNN's Amanda Davies captured his romp past the finish line from above:
Van Avermaet's victory marks Belgium's first gold medal in the Summer Olympics since Tia Hellebaut won the women's high jump in 2008 and the first one by a male athlete since Fred Deburghgraeve in the 100 meter breaststroke.
There was drama even before the race with three-time Tour de France champion Chris Froome, as explained by Natalie Pirks of the BBC News:
During the actual race, Froome fell behind around the midway point when he needed to get a new bike. He did get back on the course and made a run at the peloton but was never really a factor in the outcome.
Nearly as soon as the race began, Ahmet Orken and Onur Balkan were involved in two separate crashes. They weren't the only ones, though, including one that happened as riders were making their way to the end. It didn't affect the lead group, but going down the mountains proved to be a difficult task for many riders.
Here's a look at one of the early crashes involving Australia's Richie Porte that also shows the safety netting installed to help combat any major disasters, per the Telegraph:
That would be the end for Porte, who was briefly ranked No. 1 in the UCI world rankings earlier this year. Per the Australian Olympic Team's official Twitter account, Porte was taken to the hospital with "a suspected broken collarbone."
Porte did fare better than Samad Pourseyedi in terms of making it through a crash even with his potential injury, all things considered. The Iranian cyclist was coming down the Grumari climb when he had to unclip, wound up hitting a ditch and slammed head first into a wall.
Patrick Redford of Deadspin noted that Pourseyedi "appeared to be in the process of undergoing concussion procedures" as his day on the track came to a scary and abrupt end.
This was certainly a race that had its share of big moments, though it was not smooth sailing for most of the field. Between the heavy barrage of crashes and hot temperatures, a lot of the athletes were fighting more than just finishing 150 miles.
Van Avermaet was the right cyclist in the right place at the right time, and he took full advantage of the opportunity in front of him.
We've been here before.
Cyclist impresses, wins medals and events only to be found out as a drugs cheat. The truth will come out at some point—as Lance Armstrong found out, to his detriment.
These things never go away. If a cheat beats the testers one year, there's new evidence and testimony that eventually creeps up and bites them. It lurks around the corner, at the bottom of every test tube or on the tip of the tongue of an aggrieved foe.
Call it science or just plain karma, few cheats can dodge their fate forever.
On the eve of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, Team GB's Lizzie Armitstead has found herself under the same sort of scrutiny as Armstrong. She's had her character questioned, her sportsmanship put under the spotlight. Her integrity as an Olympic cyclist has been damaged—in her eyes—for good.
All for what? Missing three out-of-competition drugs tests in a 12-month period. At no point has she tested positive, and after the first of those missed tests, she gave a negative sample the following day at the UCI Women's Road World Cup event.
It hardly smacks of her cheating or trying to cover up wrongdoing. Naive and disorganised maybe, but a cheat who deserves to be banned? Pull the other one.
As shoddy as it was on Armitstead's part to miss those tests, we need to get a grip here. It's right to criticise and point the finger for her errors, but for her case to even be put on a level with what we've seen from the likes of Armstrong and, more recently, Russian athletes, is completely unbalanced.
In those cases, Armstrong and the Russians were doping on an industrial scale; Armitstead missed some tests and in one instance, for good reason, due to personal reasons to do with her family.
She can't be tarred with anything resembling the same brush, and banning her would do just that.
"In this situation I'm never going to win. If I win, people will say it's because of something else," Armitstead told BBC Sport in an emotional interview this week.
She has a point. After four years of training, Armitstead's Olympics is in tatters. If she goes one better than her road silver at the 2012 London Games, the questions will be coming at her as quickly as she rotated the pedals on her bike.
The pressure will be cranked up; those missed tests will poured over all the more.
Should Armitstead fail to at least podium, then what has everything been for since she crossed the finish line in London? She loses with a medal and without.
There are events every year that keep competitors such as Armitstead going. It's the Olympics that really whets the appetite for them, though. It's labelled the greatest show on Earth for a reason—because it is.
The Olympics is the pinnacle for virtually every sportsman or woman who competes at the Games. Footballers are privileged that they receive acclaim from the masses on a regular basis, and it's the same for tennis stars and the golfers who have turned up in Rio.
For the niche events, though, the Olympics is their stage. It's when sports fans will tune in to synchronised swimming and make a real effort to understand the sport. Judo becomes televised; archery isn't just something we associate with Robin Hood and his merry men.
Sure, cycling sits somewhere in between. It has a profile, but the Olympics is still what drives the likes of Armitstead. And as she takes to the road on Sunday, it'll be with to a backdrop of criticism for something she has clearly not done.
Her record tells us she isn't a drugs cheat, but the suggestion she is has far wider implications. Whether they like it or not, the spotlight is now firmly on British Cycling, too.
"I'm absolutely devastated because people are going to judge me and my family. I will never cheat in any walk of life," Armitstead continued. "I feel extremely guilty that I've had to put team-mates through extra media questions."
Britain's cyclists are a major source of pride for sport in the UK. In a sport that has been dominated by drugs and winners living enriched lives off the back of cheating, Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome have excelled through being clean.
They've shown a commitment to training, and Sir Dave Brailsford revolutionised the sport with his techniques and focus. We've seen Sir Chris Hoy become an Olympic hero, while Victoria Pendleton and Laura Trott have also carried the flag to great acclaim.
Those are just a few of the names of which Armitstead's successes should rank alongside.
Let's give her a break.
