After a turbulent season with Ineos Grenadiers, Tom Pidcock took to the stage at Rouleur Live in November amid rampant speculation surrounding his future - prior to the announcement of his move to Q36.5 Pro Cycling for the 2025 season. Talking to Matt Stephens, the British rider discusses his success in cross-country mountain biking at the Paris 2024 Olympics and his victory at the Amstel Gold Race, as well as his Grand Tour struggles and ambitions for the future.
Here are some of the key quotes from the interview:
Can you talk us through where you are with the Tour?
My first year in the Tour was amazing, of course it was my first experience of it. I won a stage, G [Geraint Thomas] was on the podium. It was great. And then the last two years, to be honest, I didn’t really enjoy it. It was difficult. I didn’t win a stage, as a team we didn’t have as much success as we used to, so it was difficult and I need to refind that feeling I had in the first year to be honest.
What is that particular feeling?
Just enjoying it, feeling like I’m part of the race. I think also the expectations grew in the last two years and yeah I didn’t meet them for a multitude of reasons, and then it’s not really enjoyable. You’re always trying to reason with yourself, I guess.
Mathieu van der Poel has said something similar about not enjoying the Tour - how do you find focus and singularity when you are so ridiculously gifted at multiple disciplines?
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. Like, before a race you’re asked how you’re expected to go and you have to give an answer that’s positive. You can’t just go ‘I think it’s going to be crap’ and then when it is crap, you have to then answer the questions of why it’s crap.
And for him [Van der Poel], it’s probably even worse than me. He’s world champion, wearing the rainbow jersey and he’s a leadout man basically.
You started the season looking at GC ambitions - was that something you felt like you needed to say at that point?
Yeah that’s what I needed to say. Everything that I’ve ever been good at, I’ve believed that I can be good at it. I don’t say anything that I don’t believe. The last years, going to the Tour, I guess I haven’t known what I wanted or what I could achieve and I’ve just been saying what I think everyone wants to hear.
After the gravel stage won by Anthony Turgis, you were inconsolable at the finish - does that show how much you really care and that hunger is still there?
The Tour is the biggest platform to show yourself and if you’re not one of the riders in the spotlight, in the jerseys or winning stages, you’re kind of irrelevant. That’s where you want to be, that’s where everyone in the race wants to be. You want to be one of the guys who won a stage or in a jersey.
Starting the race at the presentation in Florence, that day I got dropped on our pre-race ride, I got a stomach bug. I had prepared for two months and then I’m sick the day before the race. I thought ‘we’ll just get through these first days’, I was not bad actually but I was not great, and then finally the gravel day I felt myself again, actually like I could race.
I know it was kind of my first chance, but I felt like I’d missed chances already in the first couple of days and then to finish second was hard to take. Then again, from where I came at the start of the race I was actually quite happy with it in the end, but of course in the moment it’s difficult to swallow when you come so close.
Rewinding to the start of the season and winning the Amstel Gold Race - that must have been a special win?
Yeah, after the year before and winning Strade [Bianche], I put even more time this year into training camps away from home at the start of the year and it hadn’t had the same result, so it was a big relief to get the hands in the air, especially in this race and after what happened before as well [in 2021].
After the Tour, how did you deal with the quick turnaround ahead of the Olympics?
Of course it was going to be difficult with the Tour, but the plan was always that if I came out of the Tour in a really good place, I was not going to switch off or shut down after the race. I was flying straight out of Nice after the finish. If you’re picking stages in the Tour and trying to take it easy on other days, then you can come out in a really good place and then it’s just about trying to find the feeling of the mountain bike.
Did you speak to the team about how you wanted to ride the Tour and did the team have to reconfigure after you dropped out of GC?
Before we started the Tour, Carlos [Rodríguez] was riding GC, Egan [Bernal] said that he wanted a crack and then we just said that I would stay in for as long as we felt was reasonable. But actually we did want to go for stages, which would also work well in preparation for the Olympics.
What was the Olympics actually like and how did you feel on the start line?
To be honest, I didn’t enjoy the race at all. In the build up, I put too much stress on myself. You only put stress on yourself, you can ignore everything else, but I wanted to build myself up, because sometimes I can go to a race and be too relaxed.
It was a long week. We were staying in a hotel, not in the Olympic village and a lot of the track riders were not there, the road guys were not there, so it was kind of a small group. You’re inside your own head a lot, trying to just stay focused but not too focused and not think about the race too much.
After the puncture, normally I get in the zone if something like that happens, but of course it’s the Olympics and this was my biggest goal that I wanted to achieve this year, so I didn’t enjoy it.
That must have put you on the very limit - were you worried about going into the red?
When I punctured, I’d just attacked and the race was kind of strung out, I had a feeling and I almost knew that the puncture was going to happen. It was all just going too well. I came into the pits, my mechanic wasn’t ready and at that point, of course there’s no point in shouting at him or getting stressed, because he’s only going to panic even more, so I tried to stay as calm as possible.
After setting off again, my legs felt crap for about two laps and then I started to come round, I was actually still passing people and then I could see the front and thought ‘I can still win’. At first, I thought ‘bronze, bronze is possible’.
Were you able to enjoy any part of that final lap?
Was I able to enjoy it? No, because I was chasing [Victor] Koretzky. The thing is when I was coming, he kind of waited and I caught him just as we were going into the single track, so then I couldn’t get past him and he had another couple minutes of rest.
I went past him as soon as I could, but he got the rest he needed and he’s pretty fast, he wins a lot of the short track races, so when he hit me on the last lap it didn’t surprise me. He wasn’t going to give up with the home crowd and this was his biggest goal of the year as well, but I knew that if I could stay in touch there was going to be an opportunity.
As soon as an opportunity arose, I was going. Full commitment to try and get past. Obviously we were going faster than any other lap at that point and there’s a hole on the left, so normally we just went left because it’s straight, but he wanted a better run out of it I presume. But yeah I think I’m just quite lucky that he chose to go that side.
Do you remember much about the finish?
There’s only a few times a year where you actually sprint and that was one of them. Coming over that hill, and it’s actually quite a little hill, but on a mountain bike on gravel it just seems much bigger. Then I remember coming around the final corner and I start hearing everyone booing.
I actually watched it back afterwards with my family and just as the TV camera cuts, some French guy was giving me the thumbs down, so I just gave him the middle finger. So I’m lucky that the TV camera cut at that point, I wasn’t really thinking to be honest.
Do you often reflect on success?
Growing up in the British Cycling system until I was an under-23, when I won junior World Championship titles it’s just like ‘yeah, well done’. I remember winning junior time trial Worlds in Bergen [in 2017], it was a ‘well done’ and then me and Fred Wright played Xbox in the room when we got back. We went down to dinner that evening, maybe a few more people said ‘well done’, we had dinner and that was it.
You move on super fast and maybe that was ingrained into me, but it was also how I was. I was always onto the next thing, until Tokyo [in 2021] and after that everyone said ‘now you really need to let it sink in’. I don’t drink, but I gained about four kilograms in three weeks before the Vuelta [a España] that year, so… I like cookies.
What are your personal ambitions for 2025?
I think I’ve kind of lost that ability, the sprint and the speed that I had maybe two or three years ago and that’s what I want to try and find again. My favourite races are the Classics and I haven’t won a Monument yet, so these are all areas that I want to focus on.
You did Paris-Roubaix for the first time this year - is that a race that you would like to target in the future?
Yeah I thought that I could just drop in and it would be alright wearing no gloves. It’s a race that I love, I’ve won it in the juniors and under-23s, but that’s different and this year’s race brought me back down to reality. Of course, it’s the first time that I’ve raced it in four years as a professional, but it does show the level of Van der Poel and these other guys.
I remember on the [Forest of] Arenberg, where Van der Poel attacked for the first time and I was just going full gas in the centre of the road. I was like a bollard with all of these big guys coming past me and I was just getting in the way. Then we came out the other side, started doing through-and-off and then I’m alright, but it’s just the absolute power on the flat. I can’t hide the fact that the science of 60kg versus 80kg, I’ve got less power.
Looking ahead to the Classics next year, Tadej Pogačar has said that Milan-Sanremo is the only race that he thinks he might not win - what are your thoughts on that?
I think it’s definitely the hardest one for him [Pogačar] to win. There isn’t anywhere for him to make a difference and this year he tried to make the race hard by increasing the fatigue, but you can’t really, it’s not hard enough. He just spent his team and then he didn’t have the team to position him or make it fast enough on the Poggio, and there’s always going to be guys who can keep up. So I think it will be one of the hardest races for him to win, for sure.
What do you want to achieve in the next few years?
I want to get back to enjoying it, going out there and racing, then I think everything else will follow with that.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
It’s difficult. I think Tokyo is my favourite victory, despite the weirdness of it during Covid, because I was young, I was on the other side of the world and it went perfectly, so that was good. Although Alpe d’Huez was also pretty good.
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