With 100 days to go until the Paris Olympics begins, possibly in the Seine, possibly not, here’s some nostalgia as we look back at the male winners of the professional era of the Olympic Games Road and Time Trial races, and how they celebrated their triumph with liberal application of the colour gold. The Olympics are quite protective of their ring logo, which is trademarked, which means riders can’t just slap them onto a kit (besides, they’re the same as the World Champions bands), so they have to be a little cunning sometimes…
2000 Sydney – Jan Ullrich (Road Race)
As Team Telekom completed a famous 1-2-3 with Alexandre Vinokourov and Andreas Kloden taking the Silver and Bronze, it was Jan Ullrich, building up for a 2001 rematch with Lance Armstrong, who was Olympic Champion in Sydney. Sadly, he didn’t bother adding any Gold to his bike or anything. Poor start Jan.
2000 Sydney – Viatcheslav Ekimov (Time Trial)
The Russian on US Postal (imagine that nowadays) won the TT eight seconds clear of Jan and 34 clear of his boss, Armstrong – who is somehow the only one of the three to be stripped of his medal. Ekimov didn’t do anything special either, and won two time trials in the lead up to the next Olympics, at the Communidad Valencia and the Ronde van Nederland.
2004 Athens – Paolo Bettini (Road Race)
Thankfully, after the disappointment of UIlrich and Ekimov’s stoic refusal to do anything fun, Paolo Bettini won in a sweltering Athens and immediately set about making up for lost time.
Firstly, he turned up to the GP Zurich (RIP) in a gold jersey, which he was promptly told not to wear afterwards.
Still, he had Gold bar tape, so that wasn’t so bad. By 2005, Bettini had graduated to a Golden Helmet, which was much more recognisable. Things were only going to get better though, as is 2006 and 2007, Bettini won successive World Championships, meaning he was concurrently Olympic, World and National Champion.
This left all sorts of Gold/Rainbow options open to the Little Cricket, who had Sidi immediately indulge in some shoe making of the highest order:
Bettini combined the Gold and Stripes most beautifully in his Lombardy victory, aboard a Time VXRS Ulteam:
Once Specialized got a hold of things, things were a bit less funky, but still, after the dearth of Ullrich Gold paraphernalia, it was better than nothing.
2004 Athens – Viatcheslav Ekimov (Time Trial)
Once again, Ekimov won the Olympic TT, besting World Champion Michael Rogers and benefitting from Tyler Hamilton’s disqualification. He went on to win two more TTs in his Career, and so perhaps wisely didn’t go for any Gold to show off.
Hamilton, however, did get a two time trials in at the Vuelta before his DQ, winning one, where he stuck the Olympic rings on his shoulders:
2008 Beijing – Samuel Sanchez (Road Race)
An entertaining race saw three of the top four riders later test positive for drugs at some point in their career, but Sanchez won for Spain and Euskaltel, and immediately discovered that Orange and Gold are tricky to differentiate sometimes:
Euskaltel incorporated lots of Gold piping into the jersey, whilst Catlike and Sidi brought out some Golden helmets and shoes respectively:
Sidi then tried to sneak the Olympic Rings onto the shows by using their logo:
…before Euskaltel’s demise meant that Sanchez transferred to BMC, who gave him some standard looking Gold bands to denote his status as an Olympic champion.
2008 Beijing – Fabian Cancellara (Time Trial)
The Swiss Chrono Specialist originally had some rather subtle gold detailing, that some might describe as a coffee stain, all over his time trial gear, but really, he was just building to the big show of being World and Olympic Champion/
If you didn’t know it, Spartacus literally wrote it on his helmet, which resembled a golden crown (this was Pre-Game of Thrones, no melting heads here)
He even managed to stick on a Gold chain ring for a bit as well:
Needed a white bike though really, didn’t he?
2012 London – Alexandre Vinokourov (Road Race)
Probably the least welcome winner in Olympic history (and judging by the Jill Douglas interview afterwards, Britain are indeed still very bad losers), Vino improved on his Sydney silver by, er, somehow outfoxing Rigoberto Uran down the mall. Vino basically immediately retired, but not before showing off a gold bike and sticking the rings on his kit, presumably knowing full well the Olympics wouldn’t be able to do much given he was hanging up the wheels.
Somehow the jersey still looks like it was made badly on paint by a 12 year old, who just stuck the oval tool in and figured everyone would need reminding of what year it was:
Still, a Gold Bike – another for the Vino collection after winning the 2006 Vuelta in the pre red jersey days – and considering he wore a jersey with his own face on as part of “Vino4Ever”, not that ostentatious in the scheme of things.
2012 London – Bradley Wiggins (Time Trial)
Wiggins probably claims he never liked winning the Olympics now as part of his bizarre descent into some kind of meta caricature of himself, but thanks to Rapha, he had a reasonably subdued approach to celebrating being Olympic Champion. Using his Mod roundel logo on the Kask Helmet and a Golden Fork stripe on his Pinarello Bolide were the only callouts to his victory initially, although he did go a bit more golden when he was World and Olympic champion:
2016 Rio – Greg Van Avermaet (Road Race)
After surviving the bonkers descents, heat and humidity, Van Avermaet captured the biggest win of his career in Rio, and there was no way BMC weren’t going to show off their prize asset winning on one of their creations on a team bearing their name.
For the jersey, BMC and Assos added the now standard cuffs and collar in gold, but also added some gold trim around the edges of the jersey design to make the Belgian stand out from his teammates even more.
Of course, he didn’t really need to stand out when he was riding what appeared to be a fully gold bike with a mirror finish:
Sadly, BMC fell away to leave CCC, who faced the same problem as Euskaltel Euskadi did with Sammy Sanchez – how to make gold and orange work. A gold helmet was called for, and Giant knocked up a Gold Bike to help Greg get through a not particularly productive couple of years.
With the pandemic hitting trainer sales hard (new sentence alert), CCC were gone from the sport, and Greg became the front man of the rebranded Ag2r Citreon, with their very flash modern kit.
Gold Helmets and cuffs were back in vogue, which was a nice touch of colour with the beautiful brown shorts of yore.
BMC also rustled up another golden accented bike for Van Avermaet:
2016 Rio – Fabian Cancellara (Time Trial)
The Olympic Gold in Rio was literally the final race of Cancellara’s career, so there were no celebratory bikes or kits available for the Swiss to sail into the sunset with, quite content with his multiple yellow jerseys, seven monuments, and three Olympic medals.
2020 Tokyo – Richard Carapaz (Road Race)
Ecuador’s second ever Olympic gold went to the Giro winner, who finished over a minute clear of the pack. As an Ineos rider, he found himself the owner of a Golden Pinarello:
Kask also gave him a Golden helmet…
…and his kit ultimately got some bands as well.
Bu then Carapaz was off to EF Education on the back of 2nd in the Giro and three stage wins at the Vuelta, which meant he was going to have to put up with Rapha’s desperate attempts to claim to be breaking the mould be simply being a bit naff.
This was Rapha’s first attempt at the “kit for an Olympic champion.” Except, er, it looked identical to the normal kit. Oh, right, if you looked closely, you could see some of the logos were in a very faint gold. That was it.
I tell a lie, they also put gold on the helmet! But being EF, they said “why put it on the front, that’s where everyone would expect it to be! Let’s put it on the one place on the helmet no one ever sees when we’re riding”:
Thankfully, it seems someone stepped in and had a word, and EF had to change it up. Carapaz complicated things by becoming Ecuadorian champion, but he did at least get some bands back on the kit:
2020 Tokyo – Primoz Roglic (Time Trial)
Cervelo produced a Golden bike detailed with lots of rings for the Slovenian, who also wears a Golden helmet now during the races against the clock.
What next?
Whoever wins in Paris will have to align to the UCI guidelines (yes, they police what colours you can have now), which basically just mean you can only have a cuff and collar gold bar:
Still, they can do what they want with the bike and shoes…
Sicycle 
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