TBH I think that may be the end of it. The 100 mile event at least. The associated festival events may well continue, and maybe shorter events. I could be wrong but I think organising a mass participation event that long out of the capital and reaching out into the cycling-hostile home counties may be a bit of a stretch.
The Olympic legacy for the next generation lasted 8 years! The good will of local residents can only last so long.
Having ridden it twice and not ever finished the full 100 miles I can confirm it was a flawed event.
A mass participation running event is so much easier to arrange and is much more compact in nature. The marathon covers a very small area on London, mostly in the business districts. The London 100 covers a huge area. participants from outside London have to arrange overnight accommodation and bike transport. They can’t use public transport to get to the start or finish.
Instead of a mass start, Riders were sent off in waves over 4 hours so it was never a “race”. It’s quite clear that bikes cant operate in densely packed streets and the riders can’t be trusted to act responsibly Plus any small incident resulted in huge delays.
My first ride was during the back end of a hurricane. Nothing worse than most of us have ridden in, but it was unsafe for 1000s of riders hurtling down narrow lanes with deep standing water. That year I was diverted around Leith Hill and Box Hill.
The next time I rode it was on my SS because I had learned the folly of trying to ‘race’. But I got caught in a huge 2 hour backlog after they close the road due to a crash. I was diverted around Leith Hill in order to beat the self imposed course closure time.
Would I be sad to see it go? Yes, because of the novelty of riding on closed roads pretending you’re in the TDF.
But I think these mass events are better aimed at the London-Brighton type riders.
