Cycling - Schurter banishes London heartache with cross-country gold

By Martyn Herman RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Switzerland's Nino Schurter left nothing to chance this time as he completed his full set of Olympics medals by beating Czech Jaroslav Kulhavy for gold in the men's cross-country cycling race on Sunday. All eyes had been on Slovakia's world road race champion Peter Sagan at the start after his surprise decision to contest the mountain bike event rather than go for gold on tarmac. But once punctures put paid to his chances it was left to the out-and-out dirt warriors to fight for victory. Locked in battle with Kulhavy on the sixth of seven laps around the 4.8 km circuit snaking Rio's inland hills, a repeat of their London 2012 thriller looked on. Then it was Kulhavy who pounced to win a sprint finish. But a fight to the line never materialised as five-times world champion Schurter put the hammer down and sprinted away from his rival. He led by 33 seconds going into the final circuit and powered on to win by nearly a minute. Spain's Carlos Coloma Nicolas ground down France's Maxime Marotte in the closing stages to get the bronze. "I had the perfect race, I had a good start and I was always under control," Schurter, who also came third in Beijing in 2008, said. "Everything went to plan. In the end, I was able to ride alone, and get safely to the finish line." On finally winning the elusive gold, he added: "I have been working four years for this gold. If I look back, maybe I needed silver in London to get back and be strong here." Heavy overnight rain had made the course's rocky descents more treacherous than for Saturday's women's race and there were several spectacular falls. "It was incredibly tough. It rained today, and the course was very different, and it was very slippery on the rocks, and the downhills were more difficult," Kulhavy said. Sagan claimed a fifth consecutive points jersey in the Tour de France last month and is a superstar of road racing. He gambled on returning to the dirt trails in Rio but it backfired and he may regret not contesting the road race on the first day of the Olympics. He began last on the 49-rider grid, owing to his low UCI ranking. Within a minute he had bolted through the field to join the leaders. Then his hopes of a sensational medal disappeared. A puncture meant he had to pedal on his front rim for most of the second lap before he reached technical zone. A wheel change left him 2-1/2 minutes down. He regained some ground before another flat meant he had to carry his bike at one point. He eventually finished a lap down in 35th. "I was running with the bike, because I always flatted right after the tech zone," Sagan, a former world junior champion in mountain bikes, said. "And then it was impossible to make contact with the first guys." (The story was refiled to fix a typo in the Spaniard's name in the eighth paragraph) (Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Alison Williams and Meredith Mazzilli)