Crowds by Triple P's road watch the race
The road where Agent Triple P's lives is just off the route of next year's Olympic cyling road race and yesterday they ran a full test race on the circuit. There were 140 international cyclists including some top professionals who had recently been racing in what turned out to be the best Tour de France for over twenty years. We had to make a few adjustments to our planned day as regards moving the car to inside the loop of closed roads and it did mean we had to walk a couple of miles to do so but it was worth it to see such a big event racing through what has just been voted the WAG's favourite village.
These signs have been up for a month at least
Today, however the bike-hating newspapers are full of moaning motorists who couldn't get where they wanted to. One man complained it took him two hours to do a two mile drive. IDIOT! It took me exactly 28 minutes to cover the two miles to and from where we had left the car on foot. Walk, you lazy moron! These people have got so car-centric they go into panic mode if their vehicles are denied them for a few hours. There were signs up everywhere for weeks beforehand and whilst it is conceivable that people coming into the area from far away might have been surprised it was mainly locals who claimed they knew nothing about it. This is just another manifestation of some a vocal anti-Olympics stance over here, wound up by the press. Triple P thinks it is great that the Olympics are coming to London for the first time in over fifty years and people who moan about their precious transport plans being altered slightly should be a bit less self-centred. Britain, more than ever at present, need to be positive not negative.
The breakaway goes past tennis player Andy Murray's favourite pub in "Britain's answer to Beverly Hills" (TM)
There was no TV coverage of the race, annoyingly, but we were surprised to see the field so broken up after just two laps of Box Hill. With nine laps in next years race it might conceivably generate a breakaway that got further ahead than yesterday's. There had been at least one crash as evidenced by the ragged state of some of the stragglers off the back of the field yesterday. It all ended well for our Olympic hopeful Mark Cavendish who managed a sprint win on The Mall even though his lead-out train were all competing for other countries and were, therfore, working against him not with him. Can't wait for next year's real thing!
