Details have been announced of the routes to be used for this summer’s inaugural Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 sportive and London-Surrey Classic road race.
The Olympic legacy event will see 20,000 amateurs riders take to the closed roads of London and Surrey on the morning on Sunday August 4 for the 100-mile sportive, while a UCI 1.1-ranked road race will take place over an extended 140-mile course that afternoon.
Both routes, which follow a similar course to last summer’s Olympic road race, will start from the Olympic Park in east London, leaving the capital via Richmond Park before heading into the Surrey Hills.
Riders will then tackle Leith Hill, the highest point in Surrey at 294m, with the sportive course taking in one ascent and the professional route completing three laps, while both events will then head up Box Hill, with only one ascent unlike the Olympic road race, before heading back to London for a grandstand finish on The Mall.
The RideLondon-Surrey 100 will start in waves between 6am and 8am. Riders will be seeded and must be able to complete the 100 miles within nine hours in order to finish in advance of the RideLondon-Surrey Classic.
Mick Bennett, technical director of London-Surrey Classic organiser Sweetspot, who also host the Tour of Britain, told RoadCyclingUK in January he was “very confident” that WorldTour teams would race in London this summer, while he aims to have the event on the WorldTour calendar within three years.
Both the sportive and road race will form part of a wider cycling festival to take place over the weekend, with an invitation-only criterium on closed roads in and around St James’s Park, and a family ride to both take place on Saturday August 3.
Laura Trott, double Olympic gold medallist and RideLondon ambassador, said: “It’s exciting to think that in less than six months’ time Prudential RideLondon will have started and the streets of London and Surrey will be filled with over 70,000 cyclists taking part in the two-day festival. Prudential RideLondon has something for everyone and I hope it encourages more people to get on their bikes and start cycling.”
Ballot entry for the RideLondon-Surrey 100 sportive is now closed but you can still secure a place on the start line through a charity guaranteed place. Visit www.prudentialridelondon.co.uk for more information.
