Ackermann wins Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic

Pascal Ackermann (Bora-Hansgrohe), who crashed mid-race crash, went on to win the sixth Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic in London on Sunday. The German sprinter out-paced Italians Elia Viviani (Quick-Step Floors) and Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo) in a bunch kick to the finish line on The Mall.

Ackermann crashed with 80km to go and borrowed a teammate's bike to get himself back in contention with the main field for the final sprint. Viviani was the first to start his sprint, but Ackermann came around him for the win. 

"My team did an amazing job today because I crashed in the middle of the race and they had to get me back to the peloton,” said Ackermann. “I had to reward them for that and thankfully I could do it," Ackermann said. "I knew I was in good shape and told my team to get me in a good position. They were 100 per cent behind me and I’m so proud of what they did to give me a chance. I wasn’t watching Viviani, I just kept my eyes on the Finish Line and went for the win."

How it unfolded

The peloton lined up for the Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic's 183km race under rain for a course that started at Horse Guards Parade, St James's Park in central London and then took on the hills of Surrey before returning to London to finish out front of Buckingham Palace. There were four intermediate sprints in Hampton Court and Dorking, and five KOMs on Staple Lane, Leith Hill, Ranmore (twice) and Box Hill to contest.

A breakaway set off with Caleb Ewan (Mitchelton-Scott), Aaron Verwilst (Team Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Alexis Gougeard (AG2R), Valerio Agnoli and Manuele Boaro (Bahrain-Merida), Pawel Cieslik (CCC), however, Ewan later abandoned the race.

They pushed their lead out to nearly three minutes in the first 20km of the race and that swelled to over seven minutes as the main field seemed happy to let them go.

Verwilst picked up the first intermediate sprint in Hampton Court, while Boaro took full points at the next two sprints in Dorking, and secured the sprint classification title. In the KOMs, Gougeard took the award at the end of the stage after picking up full points over Staple Lane and Leith Hill. He was out-paced over the top of Ranmore Common, but collected enough points to hold the mountain points lead.

Bora-Hansgrohe, Quick-Step Floors and Dimension Data set the early pace for their sprinters in the field and brought the time gap back down to a more manageable four minutes.

Team Sky moved to the front with Ian Stannard to set tempo, and he got some help from Trek-Segafredo's Ryan Mullen. But a chase group set off with Michael Matthews (Sunweb), Chris Juul-Jensen (Mitchelton-Scott), Peter Kennaugh (Bora), Owain Doull (Sky), Jay McCarthy (Bora) and Nathan Haas (Katusha). They made contact with the leaders at the bottom of Box Hill. Matthews led over the climb taking those top mountain points, while Kennaugh grabbed the last intermediate sprint, but those competitions were already sewn up earlier in the race.

Matthews and Kennaugh crashed and so the breakaway was reduced to six with Haas, McCarthy, Agnoli, Boaro, Juul-Jensen and Doull. Those remaining six riders held a slim lead of 58 seconds in the final 40km.

Their gap was drastically cut by the set up for the final sprint from Dimension Data for Mark Cavendish, Lotto Soudal for Andre Greipel and Quick-Step Floors for Elia Viviani. The gap was down to 10 seconds with 20km to go, and although there were last-minute attacks from the breakaway, the field completely pulled them back together, and it was Bora-Hansgrohe that led the peloton into a bunch sprint on The Mall.

Full Results