O’Loughlin: Rough road lies ahead for Cav to strike gold

Mark Cavendish may be the raging hot favourite but today’s Olympic Road Race may not go according to the script, Irish team manager, Martin O’Loughlin, has warned.

No matter where you travel in London, it is impossible not to be reminded of Bradley Wiggins’ Tour de France win and he will go to the line for the individual time-trial next Wednesday as favourite.

But the London 2012 Road Race has always been about Cavendish, who has been quietly living in the shadow of Wiggins’ yellow jersey this past week.

He too had his moments of glory in Le Tour, including his stage victories on Friday and Sunday of last week.

The Olympic Games is different to the Tour or world championships, however. Teams are comprised of just five riders and it would be impossible for four of those to control the race.

There is talk of alliances — possibly between Germany and Great Britain to set it up for a Cavendish-Greipel sprint but they would need another ally and it might be asking too much of Australia, who won’t want to settle for a bronze medal.

“At the managers meeting this morning, we spent a lot of time queuing to present licences and clothing and we had lots of time to talk to the other team managers,” Martin O’Loughlin said. “The general consensus was that they are definitely going to do everything possible to make sure anybody but Cavendish wins this race. It is going to be full gas right from the start.

“It will be interesting to see who, if anyone, will come to the assistance of the British team. Okay, if three teams came to an agreement they could definitely keep the race together for Cavendish.

“But this is a very difficult course — parts of it are what we would call a boreen — quite narrow, and it would be impossible to get a big group rolling up in two lines. It will be more like a single rider or maybe two or maybe three riders. It’s a 250k race, up and down roads, lots and lots of corners coming back into London so there are a lot of possibilities.”

Cavendish will have Sky team-mates Chris Froome, Ian Stannard and Wiggins in support as well as Garmin-Sharp’s David Millar. Froome helped mastermind Wiggins’ Tour success but this time Stannard, the British Road Race champion will have a big role to play, the Belgians and the Spaniards.

“After all that — Cavendish is the favourite,” Martin O’Loughlin said. “With that, there comes pressure and expectation and there is one other factor — the manner in which the British dominated the world championships (won by Cavendish) in Copenhagen still annoys people. They bullied the peloton into submission that day and the feeling here is they are now looking at payback time.”

All this will suit Ireland’s two main men, Nicolas Roche and his cousin, Dan Martin, who will be supported by veteran Olympian David McCann.

Roche is coming off a 12th place finish in the Tour but O’Loughlin isn’t worried about him being fatigued. “I’m in awe at the way Dan and Nicolas have recovered from the Tour,” he said. “They are very focused, very calm and I think this race will suit them.”