Roman Kreuziger accused of helping Alexander Vinokourov at the Olympics Road Race Event
Roman Kreuziger is facing a lot of criticism after the cyclist has been accused of helping Alexandr Vinokourov in his Olympics gold medal hunt at the 2012 Olympics Men’s Road Race event.
The cyclist is said to have raced in the interest of the Kazakhstani rider when Alexander was allowed to break free through the bunch of 25 riders including Roman Kreuziger.
The Czech himself finished the race 8 seconds behind the leader and achieved the 15th overall position while Alexandr grabbed his first Olympics Gold Medal.
His previous Olympics performance came during the 2000 Sydney Olympics when he was restricted by Jan Ullrich for the gold and Vinokourov had to settle for the Silver medal.
The 2012 London Olympics was a perfect stage for the cyclist to get his hands at the maximum as he blazed across the finish line in an impressive time of 5 hours, 45 minutes and 57 seconds.
Rigoberto Uran Uran (Colombia and Alexander Kristoff (Norway) secured the silver and the bronze medal while Taylor Phinney (United States of America) and Sergey Lagutin (Uzbekistan) occupied the next two spots.
Kreuziger has denied all the allegations by the Czech TV Nova and noted on his personal website, “After the race I said that I wouldn't be the first to chase my teammate”.
“But I also added: because of the fact that there were other riders who had their helpers at hand. Owing to this unfortunate statement, everything backfired against me”.
“When Vino and Uran rode away from the group with about 6km to go, it never crossed my mind that they would stay ahead until the finish”.
“I knew very well that there were some fast riders in my group who would want to bring them back to have a chance of sprinting for the medal”.
Top fifteen cyclists after the 250 kilometre Olympics Men’s Road Race are as below,
1
Alexandr Vinokurov (Kazakhstan)
5:45:57
2
Rigoberto Uran Uran (Colombia)
3
Alexander Kristoff (Norway)
0:00:08
4
Taylor Phinney (United States of America)
5
Sergey Lagutin (Uzbekistan)
6
Stuart O'grady (Australia)
7
Jurgen Roelandts (Belgium)
8
Gregory Rast (Switzerland)
9
Luca Paolini (Italy)
10
Jack Bauer (New Zealand)
11
Lars Boom (Netherlands)
12
Jakob Fuglsang (Denmark)
13
Rui Alberto Faria Costa (Portugal)
14
Luis Leon Sanchez Gil (Spain)
15
Roman Kreuziger (Czech Republic)
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