Key Takeaways: 2024 Olympic Men's Road Race

Breaking down how Remco Evenepoel doubled up his Olympic gold medal haul with yet another impressive solo effort in the Men's road race

With a jaw-dropping display of pure power, speed, and a perfectly timed attack, Remco Evenepoel won the Men’s 2024 Olympic Road Race and completed a historic time trial/road race gold medal double after riding clear of an elite group of favorites on the picturesque yet chaotic Parisian city circuit. Behind him, the French duo of Valentin Madouas and Christophe Laporte pulled off the impressive feat of filling out the remaining podium places, with Madouas just barely holding on after being dropped by Evenepoel’s winning assault and Laporte working over the chase group behind in the slow-speed sprint. To expand on my initial thoughts from Saturday after the race, I’ve broken down the key takeaways from the memorable race through the streets of Paris below:

Paris Olympic Men’s Road Race 2024 Top Ten
1) Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) +0
2) Valentin Madouas (France) +1’11
3) Christophe Laporte (France) +1’16
4) Attila Valter (Hungary) +1’16
5) Toms Skujiņš (Latvia) +1’16
6) Marco Haller (Austria) +1’16
7) Stefan Küng (Switzerland) +1’16
8) Jan Tratnik (Slovenia) +1’16
9) Matteo Jorgenson (United States) +1’16
10) Ben Healy (Ireland) +1’20

Race Notebook

270km-128.4km-to-go: With such a long course and small field, the teams of the favorites let an early breakaway go up the road and build up a massive advantage before putting key riders on the front to chisel the gap back down after roughly 100kms of racing. In between, a chase group, including Ireland’s Ryan Mullen, clearly a satellite rider for an eventual Ben Healy attack, are bridging up to the front. Notably, the four-rider French team is sitting back and refusing to use precious resources at this point, while the three-rider Dutch team uses a key rider, Dan Hoole.

88km: As the race enters the outskirts of Paris, Alexey Lutsenko attacks, realizing that everyone but the ultra-top tier favorites will need to get in front of the race before they enter the city circuit. He is followed by Healy, whose teammate Mullen is now just 90 seconds up the road and sitting up to wait for Healy.

67.4km: Remco Evenepoel unleashes one of a handful of early attacks on a flat section of road through a feed zone. He is quickly marked by USA’s Matteo Jorgenson and a handful of others, but this is likely just an attempt to soften up the group and gauge how much strength the thin Dutch team still has at this point.

60km: After entering Paris, with Ben Healy still pushing 30 seconds off the front, Germany’s Nils Politt takes advantage of the pace, finally coming off on the front by ripping clear with a strong attack.

59.3km: Back in the peloton, the still-slow pace allows riders to stream across the gap. Eventually, a strong group, including France’s Valentin Madouas and Switzerland’s Stefan Küng, formed. Belgium gets back on the front to control the gap, but with no representation in the front group and only a fatigued Tiesj Benoot left to set the pace, this is a precarious situation for the race’s dominant team.

46km: When they hit the cobbled climb of Butte Montmartre, with Healy still solo, the peloton 40 seconds behind the strong chase group, and Belgium having no domestiques left to reel in them, Mathieu van der Poel attacks and is immediately followed by Wout Van Aert and a small group of elite riders who ride clear.

38.6km: This escape group, which is mainly being driven by Van der Poel and Jorgenson, is eventually reeled in by Mads Pedersen, who missed it due to an ill-timed flat, with the peloton following closely behind. Notably, France’s Julian Alaphilippe was able to mark the move and sit on to de-incentivize the chase for his teammate Madouas.

38km: As soon as the groups combine, with Van der Poel sitting near the front marking Van Aert, Remco Evenepoel sees the perfect opportunity and launches a perfectly timed attack.

38km: Unlike his previous attacks, Evenepoel’s move immediately opens up significant daylight due to the group being gassed from the just-completed chase. Evenepoel is able to quickly bridge up to the chase group, which is now just 11 seconds ahead, while Healy is still impressively alone on the front.

27.8km: On the second pass of Butte Montmartre, with Evenepoel ripping through the front groups and the peloton now 45 seconds behind him, Van der Poel attacks again. However, he is again closely marked by Van Aert, who refuses to pull through due to his ‘teammate’ being up the road. At this point, with Evenepoel off the front, Van der Poel unable to shake Van Aert, and Van Aert showing he is here to support his national team, the race is essentially over.

21.5km: Up front, after hurricane Evenepoel has ripped through the groups, the only rider remaining on his wheel is Madouas. Even though Madouas is sitting behind Evenepoel, the difference in the two riders’ aerodynamic positions means that Madouas is struggling to get a draft. With 44 seconds on the Van der Poel peloton and knowing he can drop Madouas at will, Evenepoel has settled into a relatively controlled pace.

15km: On the next climb up to the top of the course in Montmartre, Evenepoel simply turns up the pace and leaves Madouas in his wake. Madouas, to his credit, realizes resistance is futile and immediately sits down to focus on keeping his own pace high in an attempt to hold off the chase behind to salvage a medal placing.

3.8km: Heading through the Louvre and toward the finish along the Seine, Evenepoel suffers an extremely ill-timed flat time, which sets off a panicked bike change. While he has 1’31 on the peloton and 1’15 on Madouas (who is still fighting to hold off the chase), Evenepoel has no way of knowing his lead is relatively safe due to the lack of race radios.

Finish: After getting back up to speed, Evenepoel crosses the finish line, set spectacularly in front of the Eiffel Tower, and, in true showman fashion, poses for a clearly pre-planned photo-op to celebrate his historic TT/RR double gold performance.

Chase Group Finish: Just over a minute behind, Madouas polishes off an incredible ride to hold on for silver, while his French teammate, Christophe Laporte, who has marked Matteo Jorgenson’s attempts to bridge across through the final few laps, wins the sprint for third. To highlight the chaos of the race, Laporte, who finished third, didn’t realize he had finished on the podium, while fourth place, Attila Valter, celebrated thinking he had finished third.

Five Key Takeaways

The first three takeaways are my initial post-race thoughts sent to premium subscribers directly after the race on Saturday

1) The Unusually Small Field Perfectly Suited Remco Evenepoel’s Attacking Style: The 24-year-old Belgian became the first male rider to complete the Olympic time trial and road race double with a trademark solo victory where instead of using layers of tactics and deception, he simply rode everyone off his wheel until he crossed the finish line for a major solo victory.

• Alongside his 2022 Road World Championship win, this win gives him a second major international (non-trade team) road title in two years and means he is unofficially the king of messy one-day events contested with smaller, less organized national teams.

  • This is due to the fact that his aggressive style of racing, which has him attacking first and asking questions later, coupled with his ultra-aerodynamic position, which gives riders on his wheel a nearly non-existent drafting advantage, means that he can break clear of a peloton that lacks a full suite of strong domestiques and quickly build up an insurmountable gap while simultaneously riding anyone remaining directly off his wheel.

    • Additionally, the lack of race radios in international events means his attacking style is rewarded more often since it is much more difficult for the dominant teams to know exactly who is attacking and even more difficult to know the race situation, including the time gaps and front group composition.

      • Also, since his sub-nuclear attacking style doesn’t allow him to simply rip clear of a group and requires a bit of front-group chaos and fatigue to create the initial gap, he is better served at getting and staying clear on rolling courses that host World Championships and Olympic Road Races.

        • Once he is clear, it is nearly impossible to reel him in without the assistance of multiple strong teammates.

• Even more so than past World Championships and Olympic Road Races, which have typically featured between 130 and 190 rider fields, today’s race, which featured only 90 starters, with just 61 currently being from the WorldTour due to the new selection criteria, created an extremely favorable race situation that benefited Evenepoel's attacking style.

  • The small field, leaving few riders to pull back moves, meant that being ahead of the race was always going to be a major advantage, and the Belgian team played this game perfectly by having Wout van Aert follow Mathieu Van der Poel’s attacks before sending Evenepoel up the road in pursuit of the previously escaped groups.

    • Belgium’s Van Aert/Evenepoel 1-2 punch is particularly lethal in these stripped-down international races, which is one major reason Evenepoel has had such success in the World Championships and Olympics.

2) Mathieu van der Poel’s Aggressive Tactics Played Right Into Belgium’s Hands: After coming into the race as a near-absurd pre-race favorite, the World Champion quickly put his team to work on the front before launching an attack once the race hit the Butte Montmartre, the hardest part of the Parisian circuit. Unfortunately, he was duly marked by his lifelong rival, Wout van Aert, and, with other top favorites like Denmark’s Mads Pedersen having no intention of letting a dual-superstar move ride clear, the duo quickly had company.

• Van der Poel and his Dutch team looked utterly exposed when Evenepoel launched his unmarked counter-attack and quickly closed down on the chase group and then-leader Ben Healy. And, as soon as it was clear that if Van der Poel wanted to bridge across, he would have to do it with Van Aert sitting on his wheel, the race was essentially over.

  • While Van der Poel was always going to have a difficult time dealing with Belgium’s one-two punch of Van Aert and Evenepoel, considering that he simply let Evenepoel ride clear of his group and onto eventual victory, it likely would have been more wise to sit back, avoid burning any matches and letting Belgium take up responsibility for pulling back Healy and the dangerous chase group.

    • By attacking and attempting to bridge across to the first two groups, which didn’t include a single Belgian, Van der Poel essentially bailed out Belgium, as it left him vulnerable to a counter-attack and softened up the group for an eventual Evenepoel winning move.

      • And, with his attack coming on the first pass of the Butte Montmartre, it was always going to be unlikely to distance every rival.

3) The Hometown French Squad’s Ultra-Pragmatic Racing Paid Off Perfectly: While the Dutch, Danish, and Belgian teams burned precious resources early in the race, controlling the gap to the early breakaway, the French, even with a strong four-rider team (the maximum allowable number), sat back and allowed their competitors to chase before unleashing a classic ‘punt and squeeze’ tactic that saw them sweep up the only two realistic podium spots.

• After getting Valentin Madouas up the road in the key chase group with just under 60 kilometers remaining, which allowed him to latch onto Evenepoel’s wheel after he stormed past, they squeezed every potential chase group by marking and sitting on with Julian Alaphilippe and Christophe Laporte behind.

  • Up ahead, Madouas did just enough, and, most importantly, he allowed Evenepoel to drop him before he completely imploded so he would have enough to hold on for Silver.

    • This impressive and pragmatic riding both up front and in the chase behind allowed them to fully maximize their potential medal haul and showed that they clearly grasped that once Evenepoel was storming clear, the only move was to race for the second and third places.

      • Something notable about this highly coordinated riding is that they did all of this without the benefit of race radios, which would suggest they received significant communication from the in-race motos and roadside plants.

4) Behind the National Team Lineups, Two Trade Teams Had Big Days: One of the most interesting quirks of International racing (Olympics, Worlds & Continental Championships) is that riders who are paid incredibly well to work for one another 364 days of the year are suddenly thrust into the roles of rivals while riders who are fierce rivals (e.g., Van Aert & Evenepoel), are placed in the roles of teammates. While Saturday’s Road Race didn’t produce as many of the usual ‘secret teammate’ shenanigans that we have seen in the past (where trade teammates work for one another despite being on different national teams), it is interesting to look at how many riders each trade team placed in the top ten.

• When we look at the top ten

  • Top Ten by National Teams
    France: 2 (Madouas & Laporte)
    Belgium: 1 (Evenepoel)
    Hungary: 1 (Valter)
    Latvia: 1 (Skujiņš)
    Austria: 1 (Haller)
    Slovenia: 1 (Tratnik)
    United States: 1 (Jorgenson)
    Switzerland: 1 (Küng)
    Ireland: 1 (Healy)

  • Top Tens by Trade Teams
    Visma-Lease a Bike: 4 (Laporte, Valter, Tratnik & Jorgenson)
    Groupama-FDJ: 2 (Madouas & Küng)
    Soudal-QuickStep: 1 (Evenepoel)
    Lidl-Trek: 1 (Skujiņš)
    RedBull-Bora: 1 (Haller)
    EF-Education First: 1 (Healy)

    • Looking at this list, Visma’s roster's depth comes into focus, and their ability to discover and recruit talent from outside their home region (the Netherlands) is made clear.

    • Also, while Groupama-FDJ is often seen as a scrappy underdog that can struggle with consistent performances (they are currently sitting 12th in the UCI Team Rankings), Saturday’s race highlights that they do, in fact, have a very high level of talent on the team.

      • While neither Madouas nor Küng wins road races that often (they have won only four WorldTour road races between them), they are both long-race specialists (which is a good measure of a rider’s class) who consistently outperform expectations in major events.

5) International Courses Are Always More Difficult In Practice Than They Appear on Paper: While it would have been easy to look at the course and envision a Milano-Sanremo-type outcome, without the benefit of massive teams deep with firepower, the small pelotons inevitably break up due to constant attacks before the finish line.

• After learning the same lesson over and over again after seemingly mild city-center courses end up producing races that shatter the peloton and are contested by small, elite groups, it is clear that the days of national-team contested races that featured multiple laps of a circuit will be contested by riders who get ahead of the race early, not by sitting back and waiting for a reduced sprint.

  • This is because instead of shedding from the back, international races, especially Olympic games, with a maximum of four-rider teams, tend to break up from the front, with the eventual selection coming due to the constant moves going up the road.

    • For example, four of the eventual top ten (Healy, Haller, Küng, Madouas) attacked before the pre-race favorites opened up their set-piece attacks.

      • In an era of a few superstars having untouchable top-end speed, this highlights the importance of getting ahead of the winning moves before they are made.

Programming Note: Congratulations to newly-crowned Women’s Olympic Road Race Champion (and multi-time BTP Podcast guest) Kristen Faulker. Unfortunately, a full race breakdown won’t be available until the week leading into the Vuelta a España due to a busy schedule over the weekend and into this week.