COUNT Y LINES
As Surrey County Council pulls out of RideLondon, what next for the ‘London Marathon of cycling’?
So, farewell then, Prudential RideLondon-Surrey. The people have spoken and, as of 2022, it will be no more. Well, I say the people have spoken, but of the 9064 respondents to a Surrey County Council survey on the event’s future, those who strongly argued in favour of it continuing over the next five years outnumbered those who were strongly against (49 per cent to 41 per cent) – this despite only 26 per cent of respondents having taken part in a RideLondon event.
In addition, 53 per cent of Surrey residents strongly agreed or tended to agree that the county should continue hosting the event, while 54 per cent agreed that the benefits of the event outweighed the disruption. The numbers in favour of the event were described in the council report that has determined the event’s future as a ‘small majority’. A majority, however, is a majority.
From a purely sporting perspective, participating in the 2015 RideLondon 100 is easily a top three highlight of my decade writing for Cycling Plus. An adrenaline-fuelled romp through the sights of central London and over the hills and roads that defined the London 2012 Olympic road race route, alongside over 20,000 others, it was unlike any bike ride I’d done before or since. With its mammoth scale and ambition, and its closure of roads in the capital and south through Surrey, it always seemed a miracle of logistics that the organiser, London Marathon Events, pulled it off even once. Coming back each year since 2013 has clearly built up some resentment in a minority of residents.
Like its sister event, the Virgin London Marathon, it’s not only been a sporting success but a charitable one too. In its seven years, £77m has been raised by participants for good causes. The London Marathon Charitable Trust (LMCT), where surplus money from its events is given back to the community for sportsrelated projects, has given £4.8m to 93 Surrey projects since the first event in 2013. Surrey’s withdrawal means they’ll no longer be able to access grants from the trust. Other positive outcomes of RideLondon, as detailed in the council report, include promoting Surrey tourism and encouraging the health and sustainable transport solutions of cycling. In addition, the event costs the county nothing, apart from the time of council officers.
Against this, the report detailed the disruption to residents, businesses and services through the daylong road closures; the “anti-social behaviour from some cyclists on the event and in the run-up to the event”; and the belief that the event is too skewed to competitive cyclists and doesn’t translate to more people onto bikes for transport purposes. With a polarised response in the survey’s results, the council says they attempted to negotiate a “better deal” for the county by requesting money to expand its school cycling training programme, which they say was declined because it didn’t meet the requirements of the LMCT’s criteria for grants.
Taking all this into account, the council recommended to its cabinet in October that they pull the plug on it and the cabinet duly obliged. It’s a huge shame that, in a year that has seen the events calendar wiped out, the future of our showpiece cycling event has been thrown into such doubt.
Where can it go from here? In the council’s summary, it suggested that a solution could be for a route that’s altered annually rather, but that seems unlikely at this point. In any case, RideLondon in 2021 is set to be a shorter 50km route that only enters Surrey for six of them, but what about 2022? Could it head through Essex – a more natural destination from the Olympic Park – or has Surrey’s exit brought the whole thing to a natural conclusion?
We can only hope a solution is found.
“With its mammoth scale and ambition, it was a miracle of logistics that the organisers pulled it off even once”