Ride London gives Boris Johnson new spin on capital's cycling appeal

London mayor Boris Johnson (centre) completes the Surrey 100 bike ride during day two of the Ride London cycling weekend. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA

The culmination of an unprecedented weekend of events designed to show off London as a cycling city and in turn inspire the nation came at around 2.30pm on Sunday as a puffing blond man in an oversized blue T-shirt and baggy shorts got off his bike at The Mall, eight hours and 100 miles from his starting point.

"Unbelievable," said Boris Johnson, London's mayor and one of the main instigators of the Ride London events which saw much of the capital given over to the two-wheeled for two days. "I was overtaken solidly for about four hours, and then in the last bit I was starting to overhaul some people, a few 60-year-old men, children. But 80-year-old women were still soaring past me. So it was a very chastening but wonderful experience."

Around 50,000 riders, including many families, packed on to a short section of closed roads on Saturday, before 16,000 of their more gung-ho peers took a longer loop from the capital into Surrey and back again. The new events showed London to be "the world capital of the velocipede", an ebullient Johnson told the crowds at the finish over the PA.

The weekend was intended to tap into the enthusiasm sparked by the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics for all things cycling, both as a sport and an everyday pursuit. Saturday also saw a race for top women riders around central London, won by Britain's Laura Trott, while there were also youth and handcycle events. Sunday saw men's teams tackle an extended version of the 100-mile course ridden by Johnson.

Billed as the London Marathon on wheels, Ride London will become an annual festival of cycling intended to inspire all sorts to take up the pursuit, much as the London Marathon has done for running over 33 years.

The mayor invested considerable political capital in the event, not least risking the ire of motorists with a series of road closures covering large parts of central, east and west London as well as a fair section of Surrey.

He also took something of a risk in promising to ride the 100-mile event, and in recent months seemingly spent as much time gloomily predicting a ponderous 12-hour effort as he did actually training.

In the end, supported by a mini-peloton of officials and his wife, Marina, Johnson made it in a very decent eight hours 10 minutes, including several "long and liquid breaks" and an interlude when a kindly co-competitor called Mark fixed a mayoral puncture.

His efforts should be an inspiration for others, Johnson said: "The truth is it's not that hard, and I'm here to prove it. I am 17 stone, I'm by no means fit, and I got myself round that course in a perfectly respectable time. Not supersonic, but perfectly respectable.

"The message we're trying to get over is this is for everybody."

The crowds around the course were sometimes modest compared with the marathon, but they were encouraging for an event in its first year.

"There were people out in their front gardens at 7.30 in the morning in their pyjamas, with cups of tea, cheering people on," said Catherine Hayley-Bell, 29, a London solicitor who had just completed the course with friend Sara Stebbling, 31. It was their first such cycling event, making them relatively rare on a course filled with experienced-looking riders sporting club jerseys and expensive, shiny bikes.

The event organiser, Hugh Brasher, also race director of the London Marathon, said the aim was to have more cycling newcomers take part next year, when the entry intake will be increased by about 6,000.

For the inaugural year, Brasher said, it was seen as useful from an organisational point of view to make sure most of the field would finish the 100 miles within the nine-hour time limit.

"We will absolutely broaden the appeal," he said. "But we had to be quite selective in the first year in terms of the number of riders we could take who had never done this type of event before."

Johnson's efforts should tempt more of those not fitting the "chiselled whippet" model described by the mayor, Brasher added. "We've got the entries for 2014 open in eight days' time. If the pictures of the mayor on the front pages of newspapers don't inspire people to say, 'If he can do it, I can do it,' then nothing will. It puts it into the place of the normal person, much like the London Marathon has done."

They might not have the mayor for company next year, however. Asked if he would commit to returning in 2014, Johnson paused. "I'm not giving any hostages to fortune," he said. "I think I'll keep my powder dry on that one."

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/04/ride-london-boris-johnson-cycling-event

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