Prince Charles greets road race peloton

Prince Charles added a touch of royal glamour to the start of the men’s Olympic road race Saturday when he attended the start line to greet the peloton. Prince Charles was accompanid by his wife Camilla at the start of the 250km race for which Britain’s world champion Mark Cavendish is the hot favourite.
The Isle of Man rider will be supported by David Millar, Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Ian Stannard, the national champion. With the exception of Stannard, all of Britain’s five riders won stages at the Tour de France, where Wiggins claimed an historic yellow jersey triumph last Sunday.
They are expected to provide crucial support for Cavendish throughout the race, especially over the nine laps of a circuit which includes the climb of Box Hill. Cavendish said: “If it goes to a sprint I’m not worried about it at all. I’m flying at the moment. It’s just whether we can control the race and not let a breakaway smash it on the hills.” Among Cavendish’s big challengers will be Slovakian Peter Sagan, Australian Matt Goss, Belgians Philippe Gilbert and Tom Boonen, Spain’s Luis Leon Sanchez, Swiss Fabian Cancellara and German Andre Greipel.
Vinokourov wins Olympic gold: Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan claimed an unexpected but deserved win in the men’s Olympic road race Saturday, wrecking Mark Cavendish’s hopes of delivering a first gold of the Games for the hosts. Colombia’s Rigoberto Uran won the silver with Norway’s Alexander Kristoff taking the bronze after 249.5 km of racing which finished in the shadow of Buckingham Palace on The Mall. Race favourite Cavendish finished well off the podium as Britain’s highly-fancied team were undone by a combination of tactical racing and some incisive, late attacks.
With no race radios and teams of a maximum five riders, Britain were constantly tested throughout the race which took in nine laps of the hilly 15.4 km Box Hill circuit, to the south of London.
Cauldron to be broken up and given to nations: The Olympic cauldron will be broken up at the London closing ceremony and each of its 204 copper ‘petals’ given to the competing nations as a souvenir, its creator said Saturday. Thomas Heatherwick said he had wanted to create a cauldron for the Olympic flame that would “root the whole ceremony in the spectators, in the people who would be there”. “We were aware that cauldrons have been getting bigger, higher, fatter, as each Olympics has happened and we felt that we shouldn’t try to be even bigger than the last ones,” he told a press conference.