This is an embarrassing and crushing story out of the Olympics!
It wasn’t the finish she was expecting but, Annemiek van Vleuten did medal in Tokyo. The problem is, van Vleuten thought she’d taken home the gold in women’s cycling—not the silver.
Van Vleuten would start to celebrate as she crossed the finish line only to discover that she was actually 75 seconds behind gold medal winner Anna Kiesenhofer. Kiesenhofer had been so far ahead, van Vleuten had completely lost sight of her.
The NY Post quoted her as saying: “When I crossed the line, I thought I had won,” Van Vleuten would say after the race. “I’m gutted.” Gutted doesn’t even begin to describe how much it’d suck to think you won gold—only to find out yeah, you actually came in a distant second. And ya really gotta feel for van Vleuten cause, back in Rio in 2016, she’d also come close to winning gold, only to suffer a horrific crash. But the fact that she bounced back from that crash—and a fractured spine—to win silver in Tokyo? Oh yeah, she’s basically number one in my eyes!
Lizzie Deignan thinks van Vleuten won too pic.twitter.com/jaFID14a6m
— Carolyn (@carolyn2wheels) July 25, 2021
Source: New York Post