Vinokourov Wins Olympic Gold

Last updated : 29 July 2012 By Kev Monks

Alexandre Vinokourov can celebrate his retirement as he won gold in the Mens Road Race today in the London 2012 Olympics.

The 144 riders left the Mall at 10am on a 249.5km course that included nine laps of Box Hill in Surrey.

A dog running across the road was avoided before a strong group of twelve  including Australian Stuart O'Grady in his sixth Olympics, France's Sylvain Chavanel and Italian Marco Pinotti taking a lead just before they entered Bushey Park.

With 217km to go, the lead went out to three minutes as good crowds watchd on as the race went through Wadebridge.

The time continued to increase and went out to six minutes.

In the fourth climb of Box Hill where there were thousands of spectators, Vincenzo Nibali launched an attack which Robert Gesink, Martin Elmiger, Philippe Gilbert and Greg van Avermaet caught on to. 

The British team worked hard to bring down the gap to them but Phillippe Gilbert attacked.

The Belgian was eventually caught and with twenty kilometres left, the front runners only had a 51 second gap.

None of the front runners including Fabian Cancellera who crashed but got back on his bike, were willing to work with each other so Vinokourov went away followed by Colombia and Team Sky's Rigoberto Uran and the Kazakhstan rider won in a time of 5.45.57 ahead of Uran and eight seconds back, Norway's Alexander Kristoff lead home a chasing group.

Mark Cavendish finished 29th, Ireland's David McCann was 55th, Nicholas Roche was 87th, Danny Martin was 88th, Ian Stannard was 92nd, Bradley Wiggins was 101st, David Millar was 105th and Chris Froome 108th.