KEY POINTS:
Over hundreds of years the Great Wall of China has borne many attacks.
Though yesterday's battle was merely a sporting contest, albeit for the Olympic cycling road race gold, there was no doubting the combatants' grit and fervour. In the end Spain's Samuel Sanchez won, leaving Italian rival Davide Rebellin and Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara to claim silver and bronze.
For New Zealander Julian Dean the course was too tough and he finished 54th, more than 10 minutes behind Sanchez. He was a little sad because it will probably be his last Olympics.
"Unfortunately I'm probably at the end of my career and I would have liked to have come to an Olympics where a course suited me a bit more, something like Athens," said the four-time Olympian, who was 15th in 2004.
To New Zealanders, where men who can tackle, run, pass and kick are seen as the pinnacle of sporting greatness, Dean's true abilities are under-recognised. But to have watched him and the other 140 riders was to see the measure of a mighty sportsman.
Cycling is a game of cat and mouse, played out yesterday at speeds of up to 60km/h. You not only have to push yourself for more than six hours in temperatures of 32 degC and humidity of 88 per cent, but you need your wits about you to know when to go with the attacks or conserve energy.
Dean, with the aid of team members Tim Gudsell and Glen Chadwick, stayed with the pace until the last lap, without being tempted to go with a group of 26 which threatened to steal the race early on.
That group and others were pulled in and with about 30km of the 214km race to go the peloton was together.
Then the Spanish attacked, riding hard on the hills to the finish at the Juyongguan section of the Great Wall.
"The Spanish rode really, really hard, and when you've got the Tour de France champion [Carlos Sastre] and the Giro de Italia winner [Alberto Contador] riding tempo on the climb it's always going to be hard for me. I'm not genetically built for a course like this. There's nothing much I can do, I wasn't good enough," Dean said.
Before the race, Dean said pollution could be an issue, but he said it had not. Chadwick finished 82th and Gudsell pulled out with two laps to go, his work supporting Dean done.
