On 7 August 2016, van der Breggen won the gold medal in the women's road race at the Rio Olympics. On the final climb, the long Vista Chinesa, five riders had remained in the front: van der Breggen and her teammate Annemiek van Vleuten, American Mara Abbott, Italian Elisa Longo Borghini and Sweden's Emma Johansson. Van Vleuten jumped away shortly before the top and only Abbott managed to join. In the sinuous descent that followed, van Vleuten distanced Abbott and looked on her way to win the race, when she crashed into a concrete banking with to go and needed to be transported to hospital. Suddenly Abbott seemed on her way to Olympic glory but she was caught back by the three upcoming riders at from the finish. Van der Breggen beat Johansson and Longo Borghini in the three-up sprint on Copacabana Beach to become Olympic road race champion. Three days later she won the bronze medal in the individual time trial, 11 seconds behind winner Kristin Armstrong. Following her Olympic success, she was knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau.