Namibian cyclist, Dan Craven, finished 12th in the Olympic Games test event which finished in a sprint along the Mall in London on Sunday.
The event was won by Mark Cavendish from Great Britain in a sprint finish that saw the Tour de France green jersey winner stop the clock at 3:18.11.
Sasha Modolo of Italy and Samuel Dumoulin from France were second and third respectively.
Craven was awarded the same time as the winner of the race because he finished the 140km race with the leading group.
The Namibian managed to survive a crash, which resulted in another favourite American Tyler Farrar finishing over three minutes behind the pace, in the final 2km of the race.
“Inevitably with so much fighting for position, there was going to be trouble and with 2km to go there was a big crash. As I was positioned really well at the time I was still able to get past the crash even though at some stage I was really certain I was also going to go down,” Craven said.
“I was probably the third last person to get past the crash and everyone else behind us was then held up by the bodies on the ground,” he added.
With the result, Craven finished ahead of well-seasoned riders like Jeremy Hunt of Great Britain, Farrar and Tom Boonen from Belgium.
“I am pretty pleased with my result, but more than that I am glad that I got a chance to see the Olympic Course and have a much better idea of what to expect next year,” he said.
“There were many national teams at the start containing many of the favourites for next year’s Olympics and they had brought strong teams along to help them,” he added.
“Yesterday’s race was only 140km and two laps of the course, next year we will be doing 260km and nine laps of the course before heading for the start-finish in central London outside Buckingham Palace,” Craven said.
The complete results are attached.
| Attachment | Size |
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| Olympic Test results.pdf | 33.86 KB |