Cycling Controversy In Rio

Cycling is one sport that winners never excel if you quit using your feet and in order to keep moving forward it’s about a consistent pace.

One racer that had plenty to lose was Mark Cavendish who rides for UCI ProTeam Dimension Data.

At the young age of 31 he enters Rio as the best overall road sprinter of quite possibly all time as he won four stages of this year’s Tour de France.

This brings his total to 30 overall and in doing so he surpass Édouard Louis Joseph, Baron Merckx who is better known as Eddy Merckx who won eight races as an Amateur and later turned pro in April of 1965.

Cavendish was aware of the climber’s road course and elected to somehow juggle the indoor and outdoor disciplines searching for his first ever Olympic medal.

He entered the Omnium, a two-day, six event combo and set his sights on not just finishing, but winning the overall title of champion.

Earlier in the week in the Rio Olympic Velodrome he swung sharp right down the steep bank so as to position himself for the next sprint.

The Omnium is extremely erratic and the concluding point’s race, which is a format change since the London 2012 Olympics when the time-trial was last – means the podium can change right until the very last.

He somehow managed to clip wheels with South Korea’s park Sang-hoon and the chain reaction also brought down Viviani and Australia’s Glen O’Shea, somehow allowing Cavendish to stay upright.

The race was halted for a period of time while the medics focused on the more injured cyclist Park who lay motionless for a period of time.

Social media flew into a frenzy requesting Cavendish be disqualified but the race continued.

Upon the finish and after the medal ceremony several different broadcast and print media were asking for answers and finally one Dutch reporter showed Cavendish a replay as well as several tweets sent out.

Cavendish eventually spoke to the media and simply stated “It’s my fault and I should have been looking where I was going a bit more” and went on to mentioned “I hope he (Park) is all right.”

Cavendish mentioned he feels like a marked man as some of the other riders refused to let him get enough space for bonus points and feels it’s possibly now goes beyond this.

After a long eight year battle of trying Cavendish managed to grab his first metal finishing behind Elia Viviani of Italy and Denmark’s Lasse Norman.

You ponder how Cavendish got his medal, while the long and short of it is as follows:

His (Cavendish) first two Olympic experiences ended in failure, but he did come ninth (9^th) in the Madison with Wiggins at the 2008 Beijing Games when the twosome had been extreme favorites to win Gold.

Wiggins was chasing his third (3^rd) Gold but was exhausted which meant Cavendish left China as the only member of the track team without a medal, until now.

At the London 2012 Olympics, the sprinter-friendly looked tailor-made for Cavendish but the Manxman could only finish 29th.

Rio would be different as he came sixth in the opening event of the Omnium, the scratch race, before being second fastest in the individual pursuit.

He was seventh in the elimination race after being ejected for an illegal overtake to lie third going into Monday’s final three events.

He finished fifth in the time trial to go joint second before third in the flying lap saw him go into the point’s race in outright second, 16 points behind Viviani.

Cavendish consistently picked up points in the 16 intermediate sprints during the final race.

Photo from AP Photo/Pavel Gofovkin