London-Surrey Cycle Classic: Mark Cavendish wins 2012 Olympics test event

I was marshalling at the event and until 30 minutes before the group arrived I just let people get on with riding on the road. There were still vehicles for the event on the course even though the roads were closed.

Apart from people completing ignoring requests not to cross before the last vehicle passed, the cyclist that ignored my request to get off the road whilst riders were still coming through was the worst of it.

If people are offended by safety announcements, tough. None of us who helped out wanted to see anyone killed during the event as has happened before in other events.

I expected the event to be postponed however the number of volunteers was many times more than the number of police. Looking forward to next year!

Glad to hear so many people survived the dangers of Box Hill. I just hope they have leant a few thinks for next year. I might be naive (you can comment) but I watch video of the TDF going up the box climbs with thousands of people on the road not getting in the way (with maybe one exception a year) is it wrong to think we could do the same thing? All right maybe not that free but you get my point.

That woman on the PA was a prat. She didn’t even mention Cavendish as he went past….twice.

P.S. I hacked off with not being able to cycle off the hill (when the riders had been gone for over 30mins) and crept under a fence to go down a bridleway. We popped out by the Police at the bottom and they really didn’t care. Good lads!

Excellent - chapeau to matey who sneaked in!!
I was on Box Hill and echo the posts above. That woman on the PA was a prat! When the car came by telling us that the breakaway was 6 minutes she said the race was coming in 6 minutes!
Allowing people to cycle up to the bike park (who knew that would be there?) on the road would have made sense too, but we had to walk our bikes up through the woods and then walk back to the enclosure.
Not letting people ride on closed roads 2-3 hours before the race started seemed a bit like overkill, and telling us to wlk our bikes down Box Hill after the event - what was that about? This was a ROAD CYCLING event!!
The view of the countryside and the 8ft fences across the valley was great, but not so good of the racing. I will try to find a better location for next year.

Was someone from road.cc team in Richmond Park? I saw someone in the old kuota-road.cc jersey sporting a camera.

On a slightly cheeky note, the photos above made me feel a little better - my snaps were worse than yours but not by too much

My god that woman on the PA was annoying. Every two minutes she reminded us of the great danger we were in. Thanks to her sage advice I managed to not fall into the road, however I scratched my leg on a bramble bush.
Dangerous stuff.

I was also in the Box Hill enclosure and, ignoring the completely idiotic road closures (roads closed over two hours after the race had passed), most things worked well. It would be nice if the PA actually told us what was happening during the race as it was a bit obvious that the lady doing the PA could see less than we could and mostly she was restricted to telling people to stay still and not fall onto the road. Still, good to see so many elite riders in one place in the UK.

I was lucky and got a wrist band for Box Hill..or so I thought. It was great organisation but over controlled. With a massive area of box hill fenced off we where penned into a tiny area. A great event and I delighted Cav won but take my advice. Find a spot on the route and just enjoy them flying past. Box Hill has been set up to look good on TV, not a spectators venue.

I think when you've won the green jersey at the TdF it suddenly goes with everything!

red, white blue and green is a fashion faux par surely?

Nice pic carlgrz!! Chapeau

Very disappointing that there was no live coverage. Thankfully Rapha kept updating me.

BBC didn't have a live ticker like for the football. Hurrch for JillADouglas on twitter!