Alexander Kristoff’s RideLondon-Surrey Classic winning ride on Strava – it’s not just about the sprint

"I had a great party at home a few days ago, and usually I race well after a party, so maybe that's a tactic I should use again," Alexander Kristoff told the BBC shortly after sprinting to victory in the RideLondon-Surrey Classic.

“My body’s still healing after a crash on the Tour,” he later told The Guardian. “I was pretty banged up and I didn’t really know how good I would be.”

Pretty good, you’d have to say.

Kristoff completed the race at an average speed of 43.8km/h (27.2mph) and hit a top speed of 91.8kmh (57mph).

Needless to say, he picked up a handful of KOMs, including 1km along Millbank towards the finish that he completed in 1m10s.

Over the course of its short life, the RideLondon-Surrey Classic has always favoured the sprinters but Kristoff’s time for the Box Hill Roundabout to Summit (post box) segment gives some sense of what a rider needs to be capable to be up there and sprinting in the first place.

The 4.2km (2.6 mile) segment averages 4% and Kristoff went up there quicker than 68,337 other Strava users.

Or, to put it another way, he recorded the seventh fastest time. He covered that heavily-ridden stretch of road in 7m50s at an average speed of 32.9km/h (20.4mph).

He was also fourth-fastest on the even-more-hotly-contested zig zag stretch of that climb and sixth-fastest on Leith Hill & coldharbour bumps.

This wasn’t the first time that Kristoff had ridden Box Hill and surrounding roads. The Norwegian was third in the 2012 Olympics, winning the sprint on The Mall shortly after Alexander Vinokourov and Rigoberto Uran had taken gold and silver.

Kudos @Kristoff87 on taking the top step of the podium at #prudentialridelondon a week after finishing the Tour! https://t.co/EfIFwnbNEx pic.twitter.com/VcuGqxMyyV

— Strava (@Strava) July 31, 2017