Box Hill roads still unfit to race with 20 hours to go before Olympic Test

It’s 2pm on the eve of the Olympic Test Race due in 20 hours’ time. And I have just phoned Olympic Cycling Manager Simon Lillistone to advise him that Surrey County Council have yet to attend to eight sunken manhole covers on the top of the Box Hill circuit.

I said, they are have all been marked with orange spray paint these past two weeks, so the highways people have clocked them. The question is, have they forgotten? Most of the bad potholes had been filled in.

Thanks, he said. He’ll chase it up.

After my one lap of the 15 kilometre circuit, I came across the Australian team and British advisor Gary Beckett. They were about to set off on a recce of the circuit from the Burford Bridge Hotel at the foot of the Zig Zag course.

The team included road stars Stuart O’Grady and Michael Rogers. A group of interested bystanders were watching from outside the hotel.

I told Beckett about the sunken manhole covers. Hit one of them unseen and you’re off, I told him. He duly informed the Aussie team manager, who asked me about them.

I told him where they were, on a 2.5km of straight stretch of road after the summit. He duly informed his men, and off they went, with team car in tow.