Drucker takes breakaway sprint to win RideLondon Classic

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Jean-Pierre Drucker (BMC) won the breakaway sprint to the finish line to take the victory at the Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic on Sunday. The Luxembourg rider dashed to the line beating Mike Teunissen (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Ben Swift (Team Sky).

“I’m a fast guy and so I was pretty confident," Drucker said. "I watched Ben Swift because he was nervous and wanted to do something here. I focused on him and his wheel. It ended up good for me.

“I’m a sprinter who loves a pretty hard race, so we tried to make it a hard race. It was perfect for us.”

Sep Vanmarcke (Team LottoNL-Jumbo) set off a strong attack with roughly 70km to go that resulted in the day’s winning breakaway, which included Drucker, Teunissen and Swift along with Kristian Sbaragli (MTN-Qhubeka), Leigh Howard (Orica-GreenEdge), Kenneth Van Rooy (Lotto Soudal) and Fernando Gaviria (Etixx-QuickStep).

The gap between the eight riders and the main field hovered at around one minute for the final 30km, and the bunch seemed to ease up, allowing the breakaway's gap to increase to 1:30.

The breakaway riders began attacking one another in the closing kilometres, and although Vanmarcke gained a small gap at one point, they were back together on the run-in to the finish line.

The main early break formed when Erick Rowsell (Madison Genesis) Peter Williams (One Pro Cycling), Riccardo Stacchiotti (Vini Fantini, Sander Helven (Topspot Vlaanderen) and Lander Seynaeve (Wanty-Group Gobert) broke clear.

They established a five-minute lead over the peloton after just over 50 kilometres of racing.

Floris Gerts was dispatched up the road by BMC at that point and he replaced Seynaeve in the group but on the third ascent of the Ranmore climb the American team attacked once more, first with Dennis and then with Gilbert. The move failed to establish a significant lead but the damage was down with the peloton unable to respond once the final winning break went clear.

The leading eight worked well until Vanmarcke’s daring attack with 15km to go. The Belgian built up a 16 second lead but a strong headwind and a determined chase saw him caught before the finish line.

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