Healy 'super proud' after Ireland best ever Olympic cycling finish

Healy had held the solo lead with 28km to race.

Ireland’s Ben Healy after the men's road race. Picture: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne

Ben Healy finished tenth in the 272.1km men’s road race to record Ireland’s best-ever finish in Olympic cycling after an impressive attacking performance from the Irish duo of Healy and Ryan Mullen. 

Mullen went on the attack with three other riders just 70km in, and bridged to the leaders who were eventually distanced by the power of the Irish rider.

Healy counter attacked in typically forthright style from the main peloton alongside Alexiy Lutsenko with 92km remaining. After joining Mullen up front with 76km to go, who notably emptied the tank to put team mate Healy in with a shout, Mullen dropped back 10km later, and Healy pressed on with the Kazakhstani rider in tow. He was joined by a quality chase group and remained in in a lead break of three inside the last 30km when eventual race winner Remco Evenepoel and silver medal winner Valentin Madouas pressed on.

Healy was absorbed by the chasers but was still hung on with considerable grit an eight-rider group 1m16s down sprinting for the bronze medal at the Trocadero in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on a memorable day for Irish cycling. After his breakaway heroics Ryan Mullen completed the race in 60th position, just under 16m 56s behind Evenepoel.

“I did what I could and played my cards the best way I knew how to, which gave me the best opportunity of trying to go for a medal," said Healy.

"I’m super proud of the performance and the team. I’ve got to be happy with that. Maybe if I had a little more in the tank I could’ve been super close to a medal but top ten is something to be proud of.”

Evenepoel overcame a late puncture to complete an historic Olympic time trial and road race double as he soloed to victory on the streets of Paris.

After more than six hours of racing the 24-year-old Belgian had dropped Frenchman Madouas to go solo and open up a gap of more than a minute.

But it was a cushion he would need as he lost pressure in the back wheel coming past the Louvre, scrambling for a spare bike with just 3.8 kilometres of the 273km race left to go.

There was initially a look of panic on Evenepoel's face as he begged a TV motorbike for a time check, but he had no reason to worry as he still won by one minute and 11 seconds from Madouas with another Frenchman, Christophe Laporte, third.

Evenepoel's victory made him the first ever man to win both the road race and the time trial in the same Olympic Games, and the first rider to do it since the Netherlands' Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel claimed the double at the Sydney Games in 2000.