World's most competitive Strava KOM Box Hill smashed by pro cyclist Rory Townsend

There's a new king of Box Hill...

Irish pro cyclist Rory Townsend has smashed the Strava KOM for the famous Surrey climb, knocking seven seconds off the previous best time that has stood for two years, flying up the five per cent slopes at 20mph and putting out a quad-burning average power of 550w for the 4:13 effort.

Used by the 2012 Olympic Games road races and the London-Surrey Classic that followed for several years after, Box Hill is an iconic climb for cyclists in the south of England, thousands of riders flocking to its hairpins every week. At 2.2km in length and averaging five per cent, nobody is arguing it's the hardest climb about, but it very well may be the most popular by sheer volume of rides.

According to Strava, the 'Box Hill 2.2k' segment has been completed 1,393,982 times by 154,262 people. For context, Sa Calobra — the Mallorcan favourite of pro riders' winter training camps and amateur cyclist holidaymakers — has been completed 310,265 times by 153,016 people. 

Add in the fact many of Box Hill's fastest times were set during pro races and you can make a fairly decent case that it is the most competitive Strava segment in the world.

Townsend, who rides for Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team and will be racing the Tour of Britain this week, now has the fastest of those 1.3 million times, putting a seriously impressive seven seconds into the previous best, setting a new benchmark of 4:13.

To achieve that, the London-based pro who won the Irish national road race championship in 2022 and raced Paris-Roubaix earlier this year sustained an average speed of 32.7km/h (20mph) up the climb's steady 5.2 per cent slopes. 

If you think Box Hill's too easy, go and ride it flat out. Any climb can be made 'hard' by riding a max effort... admittedly our max efforts won't be seeing the incredible power numbers that Townsend put out.

His power meter recorded an average power of 549w, with a 1,086w surge to get up to speed after the fairly tight turn onto the climb. Oh, and at the top, after four minutes of lung-burning effort he still managed to thrash out 730w for the 14-second sprint from the final bend.

Previous KOM holder Conor McGoldrick commented on Townsend's Strava upload: "Fair play, you can keep it."

Speaking to road.cc, Townsend called the effort "a nice confidence booster", especially having "not been well the last few weeks".

"I've been up there nearly 200 times on Strava alone, so just to get up there with a PR felt significant," he said. "I had the segment on my Garmin for the '2.2k' sector, but I didn't realise the 'official 100 climbs' segment finished at the cafe, thankfully had a some time in hand to nab that too.

"It was a clean run and a warm day too, which is always better when setting a time. I always go out hard on those kind of efforts, but that works well as it's a bit steeper at the bottom, then I knocked it off a bit before the final switchback to have something for the sprint at the end."

The fastest times on Strava are a who's who of cycling, numerous pros and former pros holding a place in the top 0.01% of Box ascenders. Zeb Kyffin, who finished sixth at last year's Tour of Britain has the third fastest time, while EF Education-EasyPost's Neilson Powless nipped over the Channel after completing the Tour de France to set a 4:30, the 13th fastest time.

Oliver Naesen, Daryl Impey, Nathan Van Hooydonck, Niki Terpstra, Arnaud Démare, Thomas De Gendt, Ethan Hayter, Connor Swift, Stefan Küng, Yves Lampaert, Simon Yates, Andrew Feather, Dan Bigham and 154,000 others have all tried, none anywhere near Townsend's time.

Last week, riders from the Foran Cycling Team had attempted to take the KOM, Dom Jackson setting a 4:37 on the marginally longer 'Box Hill (Zig Zag Road)' segment that finishes at the cafe, Townsend rocking up one day later and taking that one too during his obliteration of the more popular shorter segment.

 

 

 

 

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