Tour de France green jersey winner Mark Cavendish is expected to line-up for the London-Surrey Cycle Classic on Sunday August 14 to prepare for his assault on the Olympic road race next year.
- Mark Cavendish became the first Briton to win the green jersey on Sunday
Cavendish became the first Briton to win the Tour’s points classification after sprinting to victory in the final stage on the Champs-Elysees – the Manx Missile’s fifth victory of this year’s race and 20th in four years.
The London-Surrey Cycle Classic is an opportunity for London 2012 organisers to put the Olympic road race route to the test and 26-year-old Cavendish will form part of a British team, with Geraint Thomas, David Millar and Ben Swift also set to feature.
The 140km test event, which covers the same course as the women’s Olympic road race, starts and finishes on The Mall, heading out to Surrey and completing two laps of Box Hill before returning to the capital, with the flat run-in expected to favour sprint king Cavendish.
Twenty-eight five-man teams – 20 national squads and eight domestic trade outfits – will contest the race, looking to recce the course ahead of the 250km main event, which tackles nine laps of the 15.5km Box Hill circuit, on July 28, 2012.
Meanwhile, Cavendish’s season will then continue with the World Championships in Copenhagen on September 25, where the Isle of Man-born rider will look to become the first British rider to wear the rainbow stripes since Tom Simpson in 1965.
