Cycling Road at the 1980 Summer Olympics

The road cycling program was the same as in 1960-76 with an individual road race and a team time trial. The individual road race was a mass start race of 189 km. over the cycling circuit in Krylatskoye. The team time trial was 100 km., with four-man teams, raced from Moskva to Minsk, and was won by the Soviet Union, who had also won the event in 1972 and 1976.

The American-led boycott had little effect on the track races, and normally, the same would be true of the road races. However, in 1979 the World Junior Champion was American Greg LeMond, who would have been one of the favorites in the road race at Moskva. He was expected to battle with the Soviet cyclist Sergey Sukhoruchenkov, who went on to win the road race gold medal. LeMond never got a chance to ride in the Olympics, but became one of the great professional riders, and the first great American roadie, winning the Tour de France in 1986, 1989, and 1990.