Having ridden Sunday’s Olympic Test event in London, otherwise known as the London-Surrey Cycle Classic, former world champion Tom Boonen said that the route is sufficiently difficult to ensure that there won’t be a big gallop at the end.
“There won’t be a massive sprint,” he said in Monday’s L’Equipe. “Look at the gaps after just 140 kilometres! There are many lessons to take from this test. It will be very difficult next year.”
British rider Mark Cavendish won the race, beating Sasha Modolo (Italy/Colnago-CSF Inox) and Samuel Dumoulin (Cofidis) to the line. The front group was fractured by a crash involving Tyler Farrar, causing some splits, and just 13 riders finished in the same time as Cavendish.
Significantly, those from 19th back were at least 42 seconds in arrears, while Boonen and Heinrich Haussler (Australia/Garmin-Cervélo) were part of a group which was a further eight seconds back. Neither are in their top form, with Boonen coming back from a bad fall in the Tour de France and Haussler rediscovering his condition after missing much of last season, but both riders had a chance to see the difficulty of the course.
Sunday’s race scaled Box Hill just two times; next year’s event will require the riders to slug it out on the slopes an additional seven times, and this could make all the difference.