Will road painters leave their mark on Olympic test cycle race?

When and where will the Test Race graffiti artists strike?

Two days to go to Sunday’s Olympic Games test cycle road race, the London – Surrey Cycle Classic (August 14) and the question is, when and where will the cycling graffiti artists strike?

And daub, in brilliant white emulsion on Surrey’s freshly laid tarmac, the names of their heroes on the course of the London and Surrey Cycle Classic? Not on the start/finish area, of The Mall, surely? Fulham, perhaps, Putney, Richmond Park, Weybridge, Abinger Hammer, the A25 to Dorking?

The sacred roads of Box Hill, much of which the paranoid National Trust have barricaded off to stop the public treading on rare plants, may not be immune either.

Make no mistake, it will happen, probably very early in the morning. The other question is how will the authorities react. They will probably go ape shit and view it as an act of vandalism on the Queen’s Highway, as they did at the 1982 Goodwood World Road Race Championships.

On that occasion, the cops caught an elderly Italian gent in the act of painting a rider’s name on the road. He claimed he was simply assisting two American women, probably supporters of Greg LeMond who took the silver medal. That didn’t wash with the cops, who arrested him and kept him in the cells overnight.

 Or will the authorities loosen up, and accept that road painting as simply part of cycle race culture?

We are all familiar with this practice from our visits to Continental races.  We’ve seen the messages painted on the roads from those helicopter shots on the Tour de France. Can we presume that the French authorities are more laissez faire? They certainly used to be on other matters. For example,  I recall seeing finish line photographers pushing gendarmes out of the way to stake their place in the road. The gendarmes just shrugged.

Not so in Blighty. Goodwood again, when Italy’s Giuseppe Saronni won the pro title, LeMond took the silver, and Ireland’s Sean Kelly the bronze medal.

As Saronni zoomed into view,   British coppers started to push the snappers back. Famous Dutch photographer Cor Vos wasn’t having any of that.  He shoved a copper out of the way and regained his position. Only to be immediately arrested, hauled off the road and dumped into a police van.

But back to the painters. They do rather like the Alps. Indeed, in my opinion, the practice has got out of hand in some places. Many stretches of road look a complete mess, as fans daub fresh messages over last year’s faded writings.

For Alps read Box Hill,  which needs 10 ascents to equal L’Alpe Duez.  I’ll be checking to see if the road is fit for purpose on the eve of the race, that the 20 pot holes up there – the subject of my Cycling Weekly feature last month - have indeed been filled. The first one and half kilometres of the ascent to the first two hair pins on the Zig Zag have been repaired. Only another 14 kilometres of road to examine – drains to realign, holes to fill, crumbling edges to smooth out, not to mention long stretches through Tadworth needing a completely new surface.