The route profile for this summer’s Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 sportive, set to take place for the first time on Sunday August 4, has been revealed.
The closed-roads sportive will see 25,000 riders tackle a 100-mile route with 1,700m of climbing. The route starts in the Olympic Park and heads out into the Surrey Hills, before returning to the capital to finish on The Mall.
The colour-coded profile splits the route into three levels of difficulty: ‘less physically demanding’, ‘rolling hills’ and ‘more physically demanding’.
The hardest category is reserved for Sawyers Hill, in effect a long drag in Richmond Park; the A25 to Newlands Corner; Leith Hill, a 14 per cent ascent which at 294m is the highest point in the south east; and Box Hill, the key battleground on last year’s Olympic road race route.
The route will have three ‘hubs’, at Hampton Court, Newslands Corner and Leatherhead, each with food/drink, toilets, mechanical support and medical assistance.
“The route profile shows exactly how testing this challenge will be,” said Prudential RideLondon event director Hugh Brasher. “The three hubs on the route – all set in scenic locations – will offer extensive support services that will be essential to help riders complete their ride.”
The Olympic legacy event will take place ahead of a UCI 1.1-ranked road race, which will be run over an extended 140-mile course that afternoon. 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.
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.
