- Annemiek van Vleuten suffered a bit of heartbreak after she believed she'd won gold in Tokyo.
- After crossing the finish line with her arms raised for victory, she later learned she'd won silver.
- The miscommunication stemmed from a quirk in the Olympic rules that makes communicating harder.
A silver medal at the Olympics should be celebrated, but second place can be a disappointing result depending on the circumstances.
Such was the case for Dutch cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten, who momentarily believed she'd won gold in the women's road race in Tokyo, only to learn that she'd been second to cross the finish line.
As van Vleuten rode the final meters of the 137-kilometer (85-mile) race, she raised her arms triumphantly, believing her time of 3 hours and 54 minutes had secured her first Olympic gold medal.
She later found out that Austrian Anna Kiesenhofer had already beaten her to the line.
"I didn't know," Van Vleuten said after the race, Sky Sports reported. "I was wrong."
She continued: "I thought I had won. I'm gutted about this, of course. At first, I felt really stupid, but then the others also did not know who had won."
The loss was the result of a lack of communication more than anything. Unlike at other competitions, at the Olympics race radios aren't permitted to ease communication for riders on the course. When Van Vleuten made her break from the front of the pack, she didn't realize one rider was still in front of her.
"It summarises it quite well if after the finish we are asking each other who had won, and what the time gaps were," Van Vleuten said in a postrace press conference, Cyclingnews reported.
Van Vleuten continued: "We didn't know. We heard 45 seconds with 10km to go. It showed that there was a lot of confusion and not only with me. It was in the Dutch team but also the other [nations]. In the most important race, you're not allowed to ride with communication, which we usually do. It should make the race more interesting but it made the race more confusing," the report said.
Kiesenhofer's win was no fluke — the goal is to cross the line first, as she did in thrilling fashion. Still, the result is understandably frustrating for Van Vleuten. Had she known there was one rider to chase down, she might have found an extra gear and made a run at gold.
Instead, she'll have to settle for silver, at least until Paris 2024.
