It's not about how you start, but how you finish.
The finish line is all that matters
and finishing well can mean the difference between gold
and going home with nothing
and there's no event where this is more evident
than road race cycling.
This is a competition where, typically,
over 100 of the fittest athletes on the planet
wearing the tightest shorts imaginable
battle it out for around four-and-a-half hours,
covering over 150km,
but the result is usually only decided in the final metre.
All those hours on the road, all those months of training,
are all about that last chaotic sprint.
In Tokyo in 1964, this was taken to unbelievable extremes
and the tightest finish you're ever likely to see.
Being an amateur event, the peloton contained a random mix
of local heroes and future stars,
including several who would go on to earn
the highest accolade in cycling -
a nickname.
Felice Grimondi of Italy, "the Phoenix",
Walter Godefroot of Belgium, "the Bulldog of Flanders",
and best-known of all, Belgium's Eddie Merckx,
known as "the Cannibal".
Still an amateur in 1964
and not much known outside of Belgium,
Merckx would go on to be the greatest road racer
in cycling history.
With cycling, it's easy to get caught up in the speed,
the power and the Lycra.
It's important to remember, though,
that each rider is in the midst
of not only a physical battle, but a mental one as well.
Tactics, you see, are key.
Throughout the bulk of the race, riders preserve energy by
cycling in the slipstream of
the riders just in front of them.
They take it in turns.
It's the etiquette of the peloton -
that's the name for the main body of cyclists.
But then, as the race nears its later stages,
someone picks their moment
and goes for it, leading a breakaway.
- Is it my turn? - Not yet.
Etiquette, Jan, etiquette.
Once they've broken away,
this group will battle amongst themselves until the finish.
But the group in Tokyo was rather large.
In fact, so large it had to be seen to be believed.
Why was Tokyo so different?
Well, it was a combination of unusual design and bad weather.
A typical top-level road racing course
features a number of climbs
of varying degrees of difficulty
that riders must deal with.
It's these hills, the extra strain they put on the riders
and the change in pace they demand,
that help create the separation.
An alpine road race might include two climbs
of 1,000 metres each.
The Tokyo course, however,
featured just one short climb of 65 metres.
Not the sort of course that strikes fear
into elite cyclists.
The competitors would have to complete
eight laps of this course
on the outskirts of Tokyo,
making the race just short of 195km.
That might sound a daunting distance to you,
but you are a mere human.
These racers are machines.
Much of the race took place in heavy rain,
a very effective deterrent
to stifling ambitious breakaways.
No matter how professional you are,
coming off your bike still hurts
and you still want your mum to make it better.
Still, at various stages,
different racers did attempt to go out on their own.
The trouble is that breakaways rarely work.
The riders put in a hard shift,
then get sucked back into the mix.
The peloton is already going at around 41kmph,
so to try to leave them behind,
you've got to really put your foot on the gas.
Get your timing wrong and you won't have the legs.
A bad breakaway attempt can be enough
to end any chance of a medal.
So, with no successful breakaways,
the peloton was still intact
when they came to the closing stages
and caution had crept in.
Over 100 of the world's top cyclists
seemingly out on a pleasure ride,
nobody prepared to take a gamble.
It would remain so until
just a few hundred metres from the finish line.
Then there was only one thing they could do - sprint.
Heads down and pedalling as hard as they could,
99 cyclists were inseparable.
But with just 20 metres to go,
Italy's Mario Zanin
and the Dane Kjell Rodian pulled slightly ahead...
..the Italian just edging the race
by less than 100th of a second.
The gap between Zanin in first
and Iran's Sayed Esmail Hosseini, classified 99th,
was two-tenths of a second.
Merckx finished 12th - the man who won everything,
except Olympic gold.
This was Zanin's moment.
The Italian won just one other stage race
over the rest of his career.
He never earned the accolade of a proper nickname,
but we think "Olympic gold medallist" will do very nicely.