The Olympic cycling events kicked of today in Beijing with a fascinating race for the mens gold. Packed full of attacks and breakaways the race was never dull as the riders hauled themselves up the fierce Great Wall climb seven times amid high humidity. A lot of early work was done by the Spanish who worked the peloton to catch the breakaways with four of their five team members taking it in turns to pull. It became very plain that they were all working for Valverde, but the Spaniard didn’t seem to have it in him on the day. Friere dropped out early and by the start of the last lap Contador had done his work and pulled out too. Doubtless the Giro winner was thinking about the up coming Vuelta. Evans moved to the front and did a strong pull with Christian VandeVelde. Surprisingly Valverde and defeding Gold medal Bettini were gapped on the climb amid a blistering pace.

With the peloton fracturing all over the place it became more and more important to hang on as Sanchez (Spain), Kolobnev (Russia), Rogers (Australia), Rebellin (Italy) and Schleck (Luxembourg) moved off the front.
With a gap of 10 seconds heading into the last climb a chase group pushed hard to catch. Schleck went hard to break the lead group and managed to shake Rogers and Kolobnev. Rebellin, the old campaigner, was just hanging in (on his 37th birthday!) and not doing much of the work while Sanchez who had worked hard early on did his part. With 5km to go the chase was on with Rogers and Kolobnev dropping the gap from 15 seconds to 7 with the main bunch coming on strong too. Then amazingly Fabian Cancellara, the lone Swiss rider rocked accross to the chase group and pushed on to catch the lead three, pulling a relieved Rogers and Kolobnev with him. The power of the Swiss rider was amazing to behold and with one km to go the group became six. In a cagey build up it was Spaniard Samuel Sanchez who powered up the hill to take the Gold with Rebellin (Italy) in Silver and Cancellara (Switzerland) in Bronze.