Team GB and Pfeiffer Georgi were left to rue what might have been as Alaskan Kristen Faulkner claimed a shock win in the women's road race.

The lack of team radios makes Olympic road races infamously chaotic and this one was no different.

Austrian mathematician Anna Kiesenhofer produced one of the biggest upsets in Games history in Tokyo and this time it was Faulkner who caught the big names cold to become the first American winner of the race since Connie Carpenter-Phinney at LA 1984.

“The Olympics is a completely different dynamic to any other race,” said Georgi, who finished fifth.

“We’re never team-mates on the road, so we were just trying to stay towards the front to keep an eye on everything. It’s new, it’s an unpredictable race and you just have to try and do what you can in totally different circumstances.”

Britain were the only nation to have three riders in a star-studded lead group of 12 that approached the cobbled climbs of Montmartre, 30km from home.

But Lizzie Deignan and Anna Henderson, working as domestiques on the day, were soon dropped with Georgi left to fend for herself and launch a premature attack that was quickly quashed by Lotte Kopecky.

Faulkner pounced on a moment of indecision to claim victory under the Eiffel Tower by just shy of a minute, with Marianne Vos and Kopecky outsprinting Blanka Vas to claim silver and bronze respectively.

“I’m a bit gutted,” said Georgi. “I felt really good and I was really hoping something special might happen and I could be in with a shout for a medal. But on the last climb, my legs said no."

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