A part of the London Prepares series a one-off one-day cycle race was organised for 14 August 2011 acting as a test event for the Olympic Road Cycling events to be held the following year. The race was named the London-Surrey Cycle Classic and was part of the 2010–11 UCI Europe Tour as a 1.2 category event. The race started and finished on The Mall in London and featured two laps of a circuit centred on Box Hill in Surrey. 138 riders from 19 national teams and 10 trade teams took part in the race, and was won by Mark Cavendish in a sprint finish.
2012 Summer Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympics held road cycling races for both men and women on a largely similar course to that of the London-Surrey Cycle Classic held the previous year.
RideLondon–Surrey Classic
The RideLondon weekend, including the RideLondon–Surrey Classic, was announced by the Mayor of LondonBoris Johnson on 10 August 2012, less than two weeks after the Olympic Road Cycling races. RideLondon is managed by the London & Surrey Cycling Partnership, a joint venture between the organisers of the London Marathon and The Tour of Britain. The inaugural RideLondon–Surrey Classic was run as a 1.1 category event on the 2013 UCI Europe Tour. The UCI upgraded the classification for the 2014 race which was run as a 1.HC category event on the 2014 UCI Europe Tour; the same classification as Paris–Tours and Milano–Torino.
UCI World Tour status
The RideLondon event director, Hugh Brasher, stated his ambitions to attain UCI World Tour status for the RideLondon–Surrey Classic by 2016. This was backed up by positive rider reaction following the inaugural race, including from Arnaud Démare's teammate Dominique Rollin. In March 2016 the race organisation applied for WorldTour status from the 2017 event and in August 2016 the UCI confirmed that the race would be promoted to the WorldTour from 2017.
Route
The RideLondon–Surrey Classic route is a variation of the course used for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The route features both categorised climbs and intermediate sprint points. Riders start from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park close to the Olympic Velodrome before passing close to Canary Wharf and the Tower of London on the way through central London. Leaving London by the A4 the route passes through Richmond Park, Kingston upon Thames and Hampton Court Palace. In Surrey the route passes through Weybridge and Ripley on the way to the first of the categorised climbs and the leafy villages of the Surrey Hills. Multiple laps of hilly terrain in the vicinity of Dorking incorporate further categorised climbs, including Leith Hill - the highest point in South-East England. On the return to London the route takes in the final categorised climb of Box Hill before the largely flat run-in via Oxshott, Kingston upon Thames, Wimbledon and Putney. The final kilometres follow the Embankment, past the Palace of Westminster, along Whitehall and turning left through Admiralty Arch before the finish on The Mall.
Sprints classification
Intermediate Sprints count towards the sprints classification; the points distribution for this classification is as follows:
Sprint
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
Intermediate Sprint
5
3
2
1
Note that points are not awarded at the finish line.
