Italy Wins Road Race; U.S. Fades : Cycling: Casartelli surges on next-to-last lap to win 194-kilometer event. Armstrong finishes 14th.

It was a close-packed Sunday ride through picturesque vineyards until attrition took over under the baking sun, ruining the Olympic dreams of more than one big country and at least one small island nation.

Fabio Casartelli of Italy attacked through a flagging pack on the next-to-last lap en route to a gold medal in the 194-kilometer individual road race through the wine country about 30 miles from Barcelona.

The 21-year-old’s closing sprint gave him a time of 4:35.21 and held off by one second silver medalist Hendrik Dekker of the Netherlands. Latvia’s Dainis Ozols, 25, finished three seconds behind for the bronze.

Lance Armstrong, 20, of Austin, Tex., was 14th, 35 seconds off the pace; Tim Peddie, 22, of Raleigh, N.C., was 37th, and Bob Mionske, 29, of Madison, Wis., was 74th in the field of 83.

Mionske, who finished fourth in the event at the 1988 Seoul Games, led the race narrowly after the 10th lap but ran out of gas on the final turns around the 16.2-kilometer circuit near this town of 9,600.

“I was there, man. I was right there. . . . I blew it,” Mionske said. Armstrong, well placed for much of the race and considered perhaps the strongest American rider, never made a move: “I was confident we’d win a medal,” he said. “I don’t know what went down, but when it came time for me to go, my legs weren’t there.”

The medal winners seemed pleasantly surprised by their performances.

“I am pleased because I thought I would get the bronze,” said Casartelli, of Como in northern Italy. “My tactics consisted of having a maximum degree of concentration on the penultimate lap.”

Said Dekker, who finished 83rd in the World Championships at Stuttgart, Germany, last year: “I’m satisfied with the silver because the three of us who broke away all had medal possibilities and we had to fight hard at the end to maintain ourselves at the head. I’m happy with second.”

Not everybody was pleased.

“The race is unfair for smaller countries,” said George Lardner, secretary general of the Cayman Islands Olympic Committee.

“The start, which gets the best and fastest riders away, doesn’t give the others a chance. Right from the beginning, we are struggling to catch up.”

Cayman riders were lapped and waved off the course by officials before the race was barely half over.

The race became a competition involving riders primarily from Europe and the Americas. Dekker and Mionske pushed out on the eighth lap.

The lap ended with Mionske among the leading five and Dekker in another group of five eight seconds back.

After Lap 10, Dekker, Mionske and seven others swept past in a tight group. Ozols, in 10th, began to make his move. Lap 11 settled the race. Mionske tired but clung to fourth; Armstrong and Peddie failed to challenge as Casartelli pulled away.

Cycling Medalists

* MEN’S INDIVIDUAL ROAD RACE GOLD Fabio Casartelli (Italy) SILVER Erik Dekker (Netherlands) BRONZE Dainis Ozols (Latvia)