Tom Pidcock slumped on the roadside in Troyes, dejected. His face was caked in the dust of the Grand Est, having just been beaten on the gravel stage of the 2024 Tour de France by Anthony Turgis in a reduced bunch sprint.
After a similarly disappointing ordeal in 2023, the Brit was halfway through his second straight disheartening lap of l'Hexagone, experiences that made him question whether the sport's biggest event was for him.
A few months after the 2024 Tour, the Brit opened up about his Grand Boucle struggles.
"My first year in the Tour was amazing. I won a stage, Geraint [Thomas] was on the podium," Pidcock said on stage at Rouleur Live. "But the last two years I didn't really enjoy it, to be honest."
That day in Troyes felt like the culmination of his frustrations, the pressure had got to the Brit and the disappointment resulted in an eerie silence around the Ineos camp.
There was an expectation that we would meet the same Pidcock at the Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team bus on a hot Sunday afternoon in Ussel on stage nine – the Brit had finished third in a four-up sprint over the Classics-style parcours of Corrèze, beaten by Mathieu van der Poel and Tobias Johannessen. But amid the chaos of gendarmerie whistles, car horns and shouting fans rode a serene and smiling Pidcock – not on his own bike, but rather hitching a backy from a teammate. You wouldn't have guessed he had just missed out on a Tour stage in similar fashion to his loss two years previous. In 2024, he had told the Rouleur crowd: "I need to re-find that feeling of enjoying [the Tour], of being part of the race."
In 2026, it seems he managed to find what he was looking for. After stage nine, he enthused: "It was nice to be in the race. It was a nice way to go into the rest day. I'm not so disappointed. Mathieu is a difficult one to beat in those situations. I can only do what I can. I'm quite happy.
"If I compare it to the last time I was in the breakaway in the Tour de France in the gravel stage, where I was second two years ago, today I was really in the game in the breakaway, so it definitely shows that my level is higher."
Over the last few years, Pidcock hasn't been alone in his Tour-phobia. During that conversation in 2024, the Brit had spoken of the difficulties his rival for today's stage has suffered at the race: "I remember one day riding at the back in the Tour and Van der Poel was just in front. I didn't speak to him, I didn't say anything, but I could just see from his body language that he was kind of feeling the same as me, in that 'this is just boring, this is crap'. He wasn't enjoying it, even though you're in the biggest race in the world and there's thousands of people cheering. It's a bit of a pressure cooker. Every day, there's eyes on you, there's questions and it's just not going how you want it to."
(Image credit: Zac Williams)
Van der Poel went some way to dispel that notion on the road to Ussel. And finishing behind the Flying Dutchman and Tobias Johannessen over the lumpy terrain in the Massif Central is hardly a failure for Pidcock – not least because he had to overcome a mechanical issue, which certainly derailed his chances.
"In the final, my shifter stopped working. I was out the back of the group on the last climb, and then I realised that the top button was working [but the shifter wasn't]."
Pidcock's famous bikehandling was on show on the descent of Mont Bessou as he unclipped and heel-tapped his rear mech to try and get his gears to shift up. We can add it to his Tour highlight reels, along with his extraordinary descent of the Col du Galibier en route to his stage win in Alpe d'Huez in 2022. Unfortunately on this occasion, those skills didn't land him a stage win.
"Then once I got to the sprint, I was focused, and I was just instinctively on the drops and I couldn't change gear anymore. Then I had to go on the hoods [to access the top button]. It's a shame. I'm just pleased that I could change gear in the end, and I wasn't back in the peloton. At least I was there sprinting for the win."
The Pidcock of 2024 would have been gutted by such bad luck, but the 2026 version looked to the positives without hesitation. The attitude shift is in large part down to his venturing out of the Ineos umbrella, which had cast a shadow over his ambitions while also stifling him with pressure.
Since his move to the Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team, Pidcock has podiumed a Grand Tour (at last year's Vuelta) but also rediscovered his love of racing.
"He's a racer," Pidcock's sports director Doug Ryder refused to call the missed opportunity a disappointment. "Today was a nice opportunity before the rest day. It's great to see him racing the way he is. This is his happy place.
"Tom showed that he wants to race and he's up for it, which is cool. He doesn't let disappointments get in the way. It just shows like he's still a threat and a danger."
"It just shows how hard it is to win a stage in this race. I think we can be really happy having a podium in this race," explained Ryder.
The team are at their debut Tour, so Pidcock's result is already a milestone in the biggest stage of all. And while it may be a new adventure for the team, Pidcock is on a redemption arc. He's won at the Tour before, and stage nine showed he is in the shape to do so again.
Alpe d'Huez beckons – twice.
