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RideLondon 2014 sportive ballot gets 50,000 entries in first 24 hours Boris Johnson finishes inaugural Prudential RideLondon 100

RideLondon 2014 sportive ballot gets 50,000 entries in first 24 hours

Organisers expect tally to pass 60,000 this afternoon
by John Stevenson
Wed, Aug 14, 2013 12:17
19

We said you’d need to be quick. In the first 24 hours after registration opened for the 2014 Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100, 50,000 people registered for the ballot to select next year’s participants. The ride on Sunday August 10 will be part of next year’s London Mayor’s festival of cycling.

The ballot will close when 80,000 people have registered. Alison Hamlett from the RideLondon press office tells us that they expect to hit 60,000 this afternoon, so while the deluge has abated to a medium-sized flood, you might still want to jump in quick.

Last year, the event took almost five months to hit 50,000 entries. Organisers London & Surrey Cycling Partnership, say they are delighted with the response.

Event director Hugh Brasher said: “The success of the inaugural Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 has galvanized people to take up this unique challenge, of being able to cycle on traffic-free streets, past iconic London landmarks and through beautiful Surrey countryside. It took us nearly five months to get to this landmark figure in the first year.”

More than 15,000 riders finished this year’s Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 from 20,000 entries and 16,500 starters. Finishers included Mayor of London Boris Johnson in a creditable eight hours and four minutes, while Jamie Wilkins of ProCycling magazine was the fastest finisher in 4:03:24.

It’s being widely assumed that there will be 20,000 spots available in the 2014 event but that number — and the 2014 route — hasn’t yet been decided by the organisers. “We will determine the number of places available next year after the debrief process,” Ms Hamlett said.

Prudential RideLondon 100
2014 Prudential RideLondon 100
John Stevenson

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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