Summary: When it comes to bike racing, the biggest compliment your peers can pay you is when they stay on your wheel at all times. If you aren’t a threat to win, nobody needs to chase when you try to ride off the front of the peloton. So coming into the Olympic road race, Canadian Michael Woods had an excellent strategy in place: keep an eye on the winner of the last two Tours De France, Tadej Pogacar, and do his best to chase Belgian climber and sprinter, Wout Van Aert. Trouble is, guess who those two professional beasts were following in the field of 100 racers? Bingo. The pack has wised up to the fact that when conditions are hot, wet or windy, climbs are relentless, and distances above 200 kilometers...Rusty Woods is the man to beat. He is too modest to say so, chatting with Anastasia today from the Olympic Village, but Woods played his cards perfectly Saturday. He was super aggressive on Mount Fuji, climbing to the front of the field, but the world’s best riders were nervously marking his every move. Woods' fifth-place finish is a deceptive result...in a six hour race, he missed a silver medal by hundredths of a second. The Canadian gets the last laugh though. While the rest of the cyclists were off to yet another dreary ice bath...Rusty was hopping a plane home to Andorra, where he and his wife Elly are expecting a little brother for their toddler daughter any second now.
