- Ecuadorian becomes his country’s second Olympic medallist
- Van Aert and Pogacar take silver and bronze in punishing heat
Richard Carapaz won Ecuador’s first cycling gold medal after a breathtaking solo effort during the climax to the men’s road race, while Geraint Thomas’s quest for another Olympic title came to a premature end after another crash.
While Carapaz, the 2019 Giro d’Italia winner, celebrated after dropping the American Brandon McNulty with six kilometres of the race left, the medal hopes of Britain’s Thomas vanished when he struggled to recover from a crash after 70km that also involved his teammate Tao Geoghegan Hart.
