RIO DE JANEIRO -- The question hanging over Lizzie Armitstead, after the dramatic women's road race had provided respite from the furore engulfing her, is whether she has learned her lesson.
The British rider had spent most of the week at the centre of a storm over her failure to observe whereabouts drugs testing rules three times in the past year.
She could have been facing a four-year ban but the Court of Arbitration for Sport scratched one of her errors to put her on the Forte de Copacabana start line on Sunday, when she finished fifth behind Anna van der Breggen.
The winner's Netherlands teammate Annemiek van Vleuten suffered an horrific-looking crash, and some of the Sunday night reports about the injuries she suffered were sobering. But the hangover from Armitstead's issues were still real and Pauline Ferrand Prevot, who had been critical of the decision to allow Armitstead to race, spoke out again.
"It was a wrong judgement," said the French rider who finished 26th. "If it was me, my federation would have said you don't go to the Olympics. You need to respect the rules, they are the same for everybody.
"I haven't spoken to Lizzie this week. Her fiancée had a bad reaction [to me speaking out] and sometimes people are strange.
"I hope next time she can get the whereabouts rule right. She needs to learn, maybe."
It is hard for many people to accept elite athletes make the sort of mistakes that Armitstead made.
She has explained at length her version of events but there surely cannot be many stars in cycling who are not permanently paranoid about observing the drugs-testing rules, regardless of what is going on in their lives.
Their careers are at stake if they err and Armitstead has accepted that her reputation has been tainted by this episode.
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to putting this behind me," she said after staying deep in the field for much of the Sunday's race and just failing to perform well enough in the final climb.
"But it's the Olympic Games, I'm a sports fan and Team GB are going to have some extraordinary performances. I hope the nation doesn't lose faith and they get behind the team, because it will be a good two weeks of sport.
"I have to come to terms with [the way I'm seen]. I can't pick up the phone to everybody that doubts me and explain myself.
"The only thing I can do is ride my bike fast, get my head down and concentrate on the things I can control."
Armitstead insisted her cycling peers have been "very supportive", and her British teammates said she had been focused on training and hadn't needed any lifting in the past few days.
She has fond Olympic memories of her silver medal from London to console herself with, but they appeared pretty distant to her on Sunday.
"I have lost a lot of sleep and it's been tough," Armitstead said. "The immediate future is about getting to see my family and being around people who care about me and love me. I'm very much looking forward to that."
Sunday's race allowed a different focus for the Briton, who said the furore didn't enter her mind once, but her performance over the 136.9km course wasn't enough to change her narrative.
Armitstead suffered a puncture early and had to change bikes, and she was pretty happy with fifth, claiming she would have needed "a miracle" to take gold on a course as undulating as this.
Finishing the Olympics and almost wanting to forget it is tough. But, after finishing 20 seconds behind van der Breggen, keeping quiet and cycling fast isn't quite all that she can do.
She can impeccably observe the drugs-testing rules, too.