The first day of the first significant industry event on the cycling calendar in Britain passed in a blur.

Yesterday, the London Bike Show opened for business, welcoming thousands of cycling fans through the doors of the cavernous ExCel Centre.

Many hundreds of them made their way to the RCUK Test Track to test machines from Cube, Fondriest, Giant, Specialized (courtesy of the Specialized Concept Store, Kingston), Wilier, and Whyte.

From today, Cannondale bikes have been available to try on the 600-metre indoor circuit, which last night also held the first events in a packed racing programme from the IG Nocturne.

RCUK’s own Tim O’Rourke earned a place on the podium after a race-long battle with Rob Cook that ended with a sprint finish that separated the pair by the narrowest of margins behind clear winner, Andy Waterman, from Privateer Magazine.

BBC Radio 5 Live’s Colin Murray showed little trepidation at jumping in at the deep end, despite a cycling career which, he told RCUK, had involved nothing more arduous than jaunts with his wife to the duck pond.

Clad in the new Team GB kit, and sat astride £5,000-worth of limited edition Fondriest TF3, Murray struggled through the opening three laps in the big ring.

“Every time I passed Lee Dixon, who was standing on the corner, he was shouting at me and I thought he was just giving me abuse,” Murray revealed.

The former Arsenal and England defender, however, was urging his Match of the Day Two colleague to use his left-hand shifter: advice repeated by Richard Moore of The Times, who sacrificed his own race to ride with the presenter.

Murray told RCUK he had been impressed by the gesture, and by the experience of racing, and vowed to return next year – more material for his BeSpoke cycling show, which airs tonight at 9.30pm on BBC Radio Five Live.