World Cycling Championships : France’s Jeannie Longo Wins Road Racing Title

Jeannie Longo of France crossed the finish line in thick fog and drizzle Sunday to win the women’s road race of the World Cycling Championships for the second year in a row.

Also on the final day of competition, East Germany’s Uwe Ampler won the men’s 105-mile amateur road race with in 4 hours, 14 minutes and 48 seconds.

John Talen of the Netherlands finished second and his Dutch teammate Arjan Jagt won a field sprint to take third.

Ampler said the fog did not affect him on the whole, “but it helped my break because they couldn’t see me.”

The women raced four laps totaling 38 miles over the same course.

It was was Longo’s second gold medal at the world championships. She also won the individual pursuit, defeating three-time gold medal winner Rebecca Whitehead of the United States.

Whitehead crashed in the final lap of Sunday’s race, finishing 31st.

Longo’s time was 1 hour, 38 minutes and 56 seconds. American Janelle Parks, a 23-year-old rider from Kettering, Ohio, crossed the finish line 10 seconds later, and Alla Iakovleva of the Soviet Union, also 23, was third with the same time.

She said Whitehead had attacked about a mile and a half from the finish and Longo caught her. She said it was “almost easy.”

Whitehead’s husband, pro cyclist Mark Whitehead, said her hands were cold and slipped as she was trying to switch gears just as the road surface changed. Whitehead required stitches in her left elbow.

The race was without Maria Canins of Italy, the silver medalist last year and the winner of the 1985 and 1986 Tour de France, who broke a collarbone during a fall on a training ride on academy grounds Aug. 26.