Earlier this month illness forced Renshaw to abandon the Tour de France on the ninth of 21 stages, the Dimension Data rider disappointed not to make it to the finish in Paris.

Before falling ill he had been in good touch, setting up three stage wins for team-mate Mark Cavendish.

He showed his form was still good in London when he narrowly missed out to Etixx-Quickstep rider Tom Boonen.

It was Renshaw’s fourth podium finish of the year, adding to a pair of seconds in the Tour Down Under and third on stage two of the Tour of Croatia.

“I started my sprint from 200 meters and as soon as I moved, Tom Boonen came through with much more speed,” Renshaw said.

“There was no chance really to beat him once I opened the door next to the barrier for him. I am happy with second though as it’s the first race back after the Tour [de France].”

The RideLondon Classic saw riders take on a lumpy 202 kilometre course which used parts of the 2012 London Olympics route.

The attacks were on from the start and finally a group of six was able to get off the front. They worked well together through the Surrey countryside and were pushing their advantage towards four minutes when the race was temporarily neutralised at around the 50km mark.

Two crashes had taken place in the RideLondon 100 cyclo-sportif, which was taking place ahead of the main event.

It took around 20 minutes for the injured riders to be assisted, and when racing resumed, the breakaway’s advantage over the peloton stood at around three minutes, 50 seconds.

Team Sky, who were racing in front of a home crowd, soon narrowed that gap as they led the chase over the hilly terrain.

One of their riders, Geraint Thomas, attacked with 90km to go while Team Sky also made aggressive moves through 2016 Tour de France winner Chris Froome and Ian Stannard.

While Froome was unable to bridge the gap to the initial breakaway, others did.

That put the pressure back on Renshaw’s Dimension Data team to come to the front of the peloton and lead the chase.

That they did to bring things back together inside the final 9km.

The peloton flew through Trafalgar Square, with Renshaw getting the assistance of his team-mates Tyler Farrar, Jay Thomson and Matt Brammeier.

As the finish line loomed at The Mall, Renshaw found the wheel of fellow Australian and a stage winner on this year’s Tour de France, Michael Matthews.

The Bathurst talent opened up the final sprint, but Boonen got around him with 30 metres to go to take the win in a time of four hours, 43 minutes and 55 seconds.

“The race was really fast from the start. Team Sky set a hard tempo all day, of course setting it up for Geraint Thomas to attack,” Renshaw said.

“With a few a sprint teams working to make it a sprint, like Orica and Etixx, we were quite fortunate to come back into it for the sprint as well.”