Teams from professional cycling’s elite WorldTour will go head-to-head with Britain’s top Continental squads in the City of London tomorrow night.
Matt Goss (Orica-GreenEDGE) and Ian Stannard (Team Sky) will make the headline race of this year’s London IG Nocturne their first competitive engagement since finishing the Giro d’Italia last month.
2011 Milan-San Remo winner, Goss, who won stage three of this year’s Giro, and Stannard, who finished just outside the top 10 in the final time trial in Milan, will face down the challenge of British teams whose who skills have been honed by races like the Halfords Tour Series.
Stannard told RoadCyclingUK he would not be underestimating the challenge of the British teams.
“It’s going to be awkward, it’s going to be fast, and it’s going to be pretty hard,” he said.
“These guys are starting to specialise so it’s going to be quite hard to keep up. I’m not expecting an easy ride at all.”
Last year’s blue riband race was won in emphatic style by Stannard’s Sky teammate, Alex Dowsett, who attacked from the start line and raced alone to the finish.
Dowsett, the British time trial champion, will not defend his Nocturne crown this year, having chosen instead to contest the national 25-mile time trial championships.
But the Essex rider, whose audacious attack gave him one of the most memorable Nocturne victories, warned that bike handling skills could prove ‘key’ to Saturday’s headline race.
“Bike handling is a big thing around there,” Dowsett said of the 1.1km circuit in London’s historic Smithfield area.
“Last year I had a really good race and one thing I noticed when I got a gap was how much quicker I was going around the corners than the bunch.
“I wasn’t braking at all and I was making gains all the time. Every corner I was getting quicker, just pushing it, and pushing it, and pushing it.
“There was one point where I hit the limit and grounded a pedal and it was quite funny listening to the reaction of the crowd.”
Dowsett conceded that his victory had been “an exception” in a race he said was usually decided by a sprint and won by “someone who’s got a bit of a kick; a punchy kind of rider.”
But he highlighted the advantages of a solo breakaway on a course filled with tight corners.
“When you’re in a bunch you can only go into a corner as quick as the guy in front of you, whereas I was doing all those laps with no-one around me so I could hug the barriers as much as possible and carry as much speed through the corner as possible,” he said.
Dowsett identified the opening two corners, consecutive right handers, each of about ninety degrees, that take the riders on and off Snow Hill, as “the tricky ones”.
“The first corner after the start-finish line has quite a bumpy entrance which can unsettle the bike and the one before the little climb is off-camber so it’s mind over matter on that corner and you’ve just got to go for it,” he said.
The elite men’s criterium will be the closing race in packed programme that begins at 4.30pm and includes a Penny Farthing race, a longest skid competition, a race on folding bikes, and a City criterium for firms from the Square Mile.
The Rapha elite women’s criterium will be held directly before the men’s race, which will offer spectators the second opportunity to watch WorldTour stars in action.
A men’s elimination race, in which the last rider to cross the line each lap from the third lap onwards will drop out, will feature one rider from each of the 10 teams, including riders from Team Sky and Orica-GreenEDGE.
