Greg Van Avermaet (Belgium) won a gruelling Olympic men’s road race after a day of innumerable attacks and counter attacks, and an unfortunate number of crashes.

With full race coverage on the BBC, most people sat down for some or all of the very long parcours. Probably before they’d caught their breath from such an exciting race, plenty of people took to Twitter to let us know what they though.

David Millar kicks things off, saying what many of us were definitely thinking

Orica-BikeExchange‘s comms man takes a slightly more restrained view

Alex Dowsett, himself in the frame for a ride at the Olympics earlier this year, clearly enjoyed being a spectator

Tejay van Garderen, absent due to his fears over the zika virus, is very pleased for his BMC Racing teammate

https://twitter.com/tejay_van/status/762001337353506816

That’s one way of putting it, Tosh

Learning from their rider Geraint Thomas‘s Twitter performance at the Tour de France, Team Sky put a gif to good use

Fair enough really

Everyone’s favourite fictional Belgian gives an insight into GVA’s life away from the bike

Several people raised a very interesting question: Was this course really too hard for Peter Sagan?

He and Van Averamet are similar riders and both very strong in brutal one day races. Let’s hope Sagan performs in the mountain biking

Cycling Weekly‘s own Gregor Brown brings up something that the UCI might consider for future Worldtour races