Britain’s best roadman

While Team GB’s gold-tinted Olympic track exploits are well documented, the road race events haven’t yielded quite the same haul of metalwork.

The women have given us the most to shout about, with a gold from Nicole Cooke at Beijing in 2008, followed by Lizzie Deignan’s silver behind Marianne Vos in London 2012 — in an event that was only introduced to the Games in 1984.

In contrast the men have never tasted road race gold. Scroll back through the years (which, in four-year cycles are eaten up quickly) and you’ll find Max Sciandri’s bronze from Atlanta ’96 and, 40 years prior to that in 1956, a bronze from Alan