Alexander Kristoff RideLondon win rounds off capital's cycling weekend

Katusha-Alpecin’s Alexander Kristoff has won the fifth edition of the Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic, the final event of a weekend that saw much of central and southwest London given over to cyclists, with an estimated 100,000 people taking to the capital’s streets on their bikes.

The Norwegian outsprinted Orica-Scott’s Magnus Cort Nielsen and Tour de France green jersey winner Michael Matthews of Team Sunweb at the end of the 189.5-kilometre race to take victory on the Mall.

Afterwards, he said: “After my crash in the Tour I did not feel so good and not in training either, but today it was ok. I could not really follow on the climb, but I felt much better than I did at the Tour.

“I knew I had a good shot and at the end Michael Mørkøv placed me very well for the final and I just had to take it from there,”

Earlier in the day, some 30,000 cyclists – among them, six-time Olympic track cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy, the two-time Olympic gold medal winning boxer Nicola Adams, and Rugby World Cup-winning England captain Lawrence Dallaglio – had taken ridden the same roads in the Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 sportive.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of riders, including many families with children, had taken to an eight-mile circuit through the City and West End in the Prudential RdeLondon FreeCycle.

Speaking yesterday, London’s cycling and walking commissioner, Will Norman, said: “It’s fantastic to welcome so many cyclists to this great city. Around 100,000 cyclists will be taking part in the event this weekend, cycling three million miles.

“You can see, from being out on the FreeCycle route, that people of all ages are inspired to take part. That’s the power of this phenomenal event; to inspire Londoners to cycle more.”

That event was followed by the Wormen’s WorldTour race, the Prudential RideLondon Classique, which was won by a tyre’s width by Coryn Rivera of Team Sunweb from Lotta Lepisto of Cervelo-Bigla.

“It’s really special to win a race here,” she said afterwards. “I loved the atmosphere.”