Tom Boonen of Etixx-Quick Step, who earlier this week announced he would retire from professional cycling after the 2017 Paris-Roubaix in April, has won the fourth edition of the RideLondon-Surrey Classic.
The Belgian outsprinted rivals Mark Renshaw of Dimension Data and Orica-BikeExchange’s Michael Matthews on the Mall to take the win, but the peloton had needed to work hard to reel in a solo attack from Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas.
The Welsh rider had bridged across to the day’s six-man break with team mate Ian Stannard and then launched a solo attack, but was brought back in the closing kilometres.
“I’m really happy to win,” said Boonen. “It’s 10 years since I’ve won in London. It was a hard day as everyone was going bananas all day long. Everyone was fighting for every metre of the road.
“It was only with about 35 to 40km to go that we started to pull back the break and it finally came back together with 5km left.
“Then the team got well organised going into the final corner and I was really happy with my sprint.”
4 thoughts on “Tom Boonen wins Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic”
Embarrassingly poor coverage
Embarrassingly poor coverage from the BBC.
Apart from the massive technical fail at the most important stage of the race, does the Beeb really still need to cover cycling in that woolly-jumpered, home-brew, it’s all just a bit of a laugh, way? We pretty much rule the world in pro cycling right now, FFS! Present it as though we know what we’re talking about and allow anyone who doesn’t to catch up!
Millar’s sections from the
Millar’s sections from the bike are great though. But yeah, there’s a bit too much catering for the uninitiated.
choddo wrote:
TBH that rather washed over me, but I disagree – for those that don’t follow cycle racing the tactics, team composition etc aren’t obvious – for example, a woman (grandmother ?) with a small child next to me in Esher said ‘is that Chris Froome ?’ as Thomas went through – my reply that Thomas and Stannard had caught a breakaway was received with a slightly disappointed ‘oh..’ Thinking about it now I probably should have explained a bit more.
Most people porbably only pick up on it when it’s on BBC, which is mainly Olympics – ITV4 tour (etc) coverage you’ve got to actively look for.
During the olympics I was lucky enough to get a couple of the 10quid box hill tickets.. so after spending a nice afternoon there my OH now has a decent understanding, if not of the names involved (which elude me at times too !), and whilst she generally tends to prefers Eastender to the highlights has watched a fair bit of this years TdF 😉
BBC cycle racing reporting seems to be rather variable – eg you’ll only hear if there’s Brit involved, and even then, little detail, but I think coverage is kinda getting better..there was a good example of ignorance in David Bond -(then BBC sports editor and generally a downbeat twat judging by other complaints, thankfully he’s moved his ‘talents’ elsewhere) when he ask Cavendish if tiredness from the Tour was and issue and got the reply he deserved https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXv3yA5k3i4
His blog – later edited to play down his stupidity, tho’ the comments still exist in the archive – was a pile of crap, whereas other BBC journos seemed to understand what was going on.
I bet the camera man covering
I bet the camera man covering the sprint finish was a bit embarassed when he saw the footage. It seemed like he was dramatically zooming in on a group fighting it out for the win, when the actual sprint battle was at the opposite side of the road.
The TV audience got to see Tom Boonen zoom through the foreground, hands aloft, while the camera focussed on the wrong group.