Jean Pierre Drucker said that it was so special to get his first win as a professional in the RideLondon Classic race.
The BMC pipped Mike Teunissen of LottoNL-Jumbo and Team Sky's Ben Swift to victory on the Mall and he said: “To get my first professional win in front of Buckingham Palace is so special.
“The crowd here is so crazy about cycling, it’s fantastic to get my first win here.
“I love racing in England. I did the Tour of Yorkshire this year and that was fantastic too. After getting my first pro win here, I love it even more.
“I was feeling good all day and at the end I just kept my eye on Swift,” said Drucker. “I could see he was very motivated and really wanted victory in front of his own crowd. I knew he would go for the win, but I worked hard as well.
“I’m a fast guy too and I just tried not to make any mistakes. I love it when it’s hard and that was our plan. We tried to make it a hard race by moving guys to the front. It always feels so good when a plan works out.”
As for Swift, in the end he was happy enough to make the podium for the second year in a row after missing three months’ training, although he admitted to miscalculating his finish.
“I had to go really hard in the last few kilometres and I started to cramp up a little bit from the effort of chasing,” said Swift. “Even though I’d have loved to have won, I’m really, really happy.
“I had three months out of competition so this is a really nice way to come back to racing and get a good result straight away. It was good to be on the podium.
“I couldn’t see any metres-to-go boards so I got caught on the front, trying to get the others to come round me, but you could see the guys coming from behind so you couldn’t play too much cat-and-mouse.”
Swift may have missed out, but there was some good news for Britain as a delighted Erick Rowsell bagged the King of the Mountains contest on the rolling hills he’s been riding since he was 14.
“They are all local roads to me,” said the 25-year-old. “I grew up riding around here and have been up Box Hill and Leith Hill hundreds of times. I knew no one in the race would know these hills as well as me.
“So to win King of the Mountains here made it a perfect day.”