Olympic road race route video released (+ video)

With 100 days to go until the Opening Ceremony of the XXX Olympiad, Surrey County Council has released a video of the route that will be tackled the following day by Mark Cavendish and others hopeful of winning the first gold medal on offer at London 2012, with the women’s race following 24 hours’ later.

The short video manages to cram into a few minutes what will take the peloton considerably longer, the speeded up film showing the route from the moment it crosses the boundary from Greater London into Surrey just after Hampton Court Palace.

From there, the riders head out past Esher, Weybridge, Woking and Guildford before turning towards Dorking and the Box Hill circuit, lapped nine times in the men’s race and twice in the women’s version, before turning back via Leatherhead and Esher towards Hampton Court, and after that, the finish on The Mall.

If you watch a lot of cycling on TV, you can probably switch on a random video and quickly work out which country a race is in and even perhaps the region, and the film from Surrey is no exception, with the towns and villages and leafy country lanes typical of the Home Counties.

Further information on the Olympic road races and time trials can be found on the Go Surrey website, while a map of the route of the road race is below.