Latest news with #TomPidcock
Times
5 days ago
- Sport
- Times
Tom Pidcock: I used to race for myself, now I want a grand tour for team
Until the 20th stage of the Giro d'Italia, Tom Pidcock had never raced a mountain pass on the scale of the Colle delle Finestre. On his way to a remarkable overall victory, Simon Yates covered the arduous 18.4km climb — ferocious even by the standards of a grand tour, its average gradient an unceasing 9.2 per cent — in a record time of 59min 23sec. Pidcock finished the stage nearly 18 minutes behind his compatriot, his ascent of the Finestre seven minutes slower than Yates. And even then, he broke new ground. 'What Yates did was pretty phenomenal,' Pidcock, 25, says. 'The speed they went at the last climb was incredible. I did my best-ever hour in terms of power and was seven minutes behind.'
The Independent
6 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Tom Pidcock's ‘reality check' from his first Giro d'Italia
Tom Pidcock has reflected on his first Giro d'Italia with Q36.5, saying 'we came in pretty ambitious, and we got a bit of a reality check'. Pidcock finished 16th overall, missing a stage win but securing four top-10 finishes, including a third-place on stage five. Pidcock has expressed enthusiasm for Q36.5, noting a 'new lease of life' and increased team profile, demonstrated by wildcards to the Giro and Vuelta a Espana. A puncture and crash on stage nine thwarted Pidcock's biggest chance, but he believes the team gained respect from World Tour teams. Pidcock aims to perform well in the second half of the season, including the World Cup in Andorra, European Championships, the Vuelta, and Il Lombardia, while considering his future in cyclocross.
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The Independent
6 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
‘I was pretty pissed off': Tom Pidcock on his first Giro d'Italia and life after Ineos as his new team's leader
Tom Pidcock 's first Giro d'Italia has been a 'challenging' one. Sitting in a hotel on the outskirts of Rome, only a few hours before the race's final stage, the Q36.5 rider is visibly tired, but says there are plenty of positives to take from the team's first Grand Tour. 'We came in pretty ambitious, and we got a bit of a reality check, I think,' he admits. 'We came here knowing that it was going to be challenging but also we wanted to come out better. We didn't achieve that stage win or that top 10 on GC, but I think for a first attempt, it's not the end of the world. It's definitely the best grand tour I've ever ridden in terms of how I feel on the last day.' Pidcock's experience of grand tours in general has been mixed, from the high of his dazzling win on Alpe d'Huez in the 2022 Tour de France, to a series of top-20 overall finishes, solid achievements but below where he wants to be. The Red Bull athlete finished 16th overall in Rome, 44 minutes behind Simon Yates, while a stage win eluded him despite his and the team's best efforts. Four top-10 places — including fifth on the opening stage in Albania and third on stage five — were 'a bit frustrating, but then again it was not bad'. He rues a missed opportunity on stage 20, when his radio broke and he wasn't aware the peloton had split going through a cobbled town, meaning he missed the breakaway. 'I was pretty pissed off,' he admits. Now halfway through his first season since his contentious departure from British juggernaut Ineos Grenadiers, Pidcock's enthusiasm about Q36.5 remains undimmed. He is open about having 'a new lease of life' with the team, who sit the tier below World Tour teams like Ineos and Yates' Visma-Lease a Bike, and are dependent on wildcards for access to the biggest races. Pidcock says this was never a source of concern, with Q36.5 racing in the classics, one-day races which suit him best. 'It's not like I need any race to enjoy racing or riding my bike,' he says. His sheer star power has massively increased the team's profile, with the Swiss outfit awarded a wildcard to both the Giro and the Vuelta a Espana. For both Pidcock and his team, the race was about proving themselves. 'The idea was we'd race to win every day — or every day that suited me, and do the best GC I could.' They particularly targeted stage nine, a gravel stage into Siena on some of the same roads as Strade Bianche, a race he won in 2023 and came second in this year. But stage nine was another disappointment; Pidcock punctured and was caught up in a crash along with pre-race favourite Primoz Roglic before finishing 15th. '[It] was probably my biggest chance and I had a lot of bad luck that day, but the team rode incredible and they held their own, and they can be proud of that. 'I think we gained a lot of respect in the first part of the year from the World Tour teams, in the way we ride. That's where we need to continue building.' Pidcock started the year brilliantly, winning two stages and the overall at his first race, the AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia in January. Strong showings at Tirreno-Adriatico and Strade Bianche followed, but he says: 'I think I've paid the price for coming out so strong, to be honest. I was super motivated at the start of the year. Even in January camp I was in super good shape. It's been a long time since then, kind of missed that extra few per cent.' Asked about his attitude at the start of the season, and whether it was important to come out swinging given the circumstances of his transfer, he chooses his words carefully. 'It was,' he says eventually. 'I was super motivated, focused, just to show that… that it was the right thing, and to prove myself, I guess. I had a point to prove.' At Ineos Pidcock was one of several potential GC contenders, alongside Thymen Arensman, Egan Bernal, Carlos Rodriguez, and the veteran Geraint Thomas. He says the experience of being his new team's sole focal point has been 'amazing'. 'There's been just me, and everyone there to support me. But in the Giro the last week, where we're just kind of hanging on, it's difficult to still be the guy with that responsibility, because you're not doing that well and you still have to keep everyone together. I feel pressure, but I did my best.' His attitude towards racing for general classification is also different at Q36.5. 'This year was more coming from me. In Ineos there was always someone who was better at GC, or who was actually [committed to it] and I was there like, 'Ah, see what you can do'. Then it's half-hearted. When it's that bad day and you have to dig deep it's like, 'it's OK, because we still have this [other] guy'. Whereas now it's all on me.' One apparent source of tension between Pidcock — a double Olympic mountain bike champion and a former cyclocross world champion — and Ineos had been his off-road ambitions, which sat uneasily with Ineos's focus on road racing. It is ironic, then, although completely understandable, that Pidcock skipped the last cyclocross season as he settled into his new team, and the 25-year-old admitted that he won't necessarily return to it. 'I needed a proper reset, and it definitely worked well for the first part of the year,' he says. 'We'll see [about the future]. Cyclocross is tough, we race so much on the road and then to also be mentally racing through the winter as well, it's hard.' Asked whether juggling competing ambitions across so many different disciplines is feasible, Pidcock takes his time before answering. 'I think as a young rider, yeah. But as you get older, you can't keep on the throttle so much, I feel. You have less energy, and you have to use it more carefully.' He will be back in action on the mountain bike this summer, at the World Cup in Andorra and the European Championships, before turning his attention to the second half of his season. 'I want to end the year well with the Worlds and [Il] Lombardia, and the Vuelta we need to think about what we want to do.' He chuckles wryly at the memory of last year's Il Lombardia, when Ineos made the surprise decision to deselect him from the team despite his obviously good form and a second place at the previous race, the Giro dell'Emilia. The Vuelta in September represents another chance for Q36.5 and Pidcock to target the general classification over three weeks. He is non-committal about whether that will be his aim. 'Here I had a certain level which was just a bit below the top 10 GC guys. I got three weeks in my legs but I don't want to spend energy every day for that; if I want to do GC I really want to be in the mix and want to win stages on the super hard days, which I think I can. But I want to sit down and really chat with the team and see where the gaps are.' It's a work in progress, but Pidcock believes it's moving in the right direction.
Times
26-05-2025
- Sport
- Times
Mature Simon Yates must be bold if he is to silence demons of 2018
In an account of his grand tour of Italy in the 1760s, Edward Gibbon wrote that foreign travel was the only way to complete the education of an English gentleman. Perhaps it is not the type of education that Gibbon meant — not necessarily renaissance art or Roman ruins — but the 12 British riders at the Giro d'Italia are certainly learning something. Simon Yates, Tom Pidcock and Josh Tarling will have mostly been looking at the riders around them, at the tarmac ahead of them, and at the mountains to come in the final week. Tarling, 21, has taken a time-trial stage win, the youngest ever at the Giro; Paul Double, who started his first grand tour at the age of 28, has looked punchy in the breakaway; Mark Donovan has turned himself inside out for Pidcock. And Pidcock himself even rose briefly above Adam Yates in the general classification. But the quiet star has been Simon Yates, second in the overall standings behind Isaac del Toro. The 32-year-old from Bury has become something of a tragic hero in Italy after his doomed assault on the Corsa Rosa in 2018. It has since become 'the one that got away'. It was toward the end of Team Sky's domination. We had watched the new super team dominate the grand tours in their distinctive style: pace trains in the mountains, head down, watt-watching, marginal gains. It was a dominant method but, perhaps, a boring one for a spectator. Then in 2018 Yates, racing for Mitchelton-Scott, took the battle to the super team. The 25-year-old won three stages and wore the Pink Jersey from stage six until stage 19, just two days away from an overall win. On the Queen Stage between Venaria Reale and Bardonecchia, however, Yates cracked. He paid for the efforts of his attacking style. It had been exciting, but it was too much to maintain. Chris Froome attacked, the man from Bury broke on the Colle delle Finestre — where the race will return for stage 20 on Saturday — and that was that. Yates finished 21st, 1hour 15min 11sec back from Froome. And so the Giro remained unfinished business. He won the Vuelta a España in 2018 (and remains the only British grand tour winner outside of Team Sky/ Ineos Grenadiers) and he competed at the Tour de France, but there's always been a feeling that Yates must try again to win the Giro d'Italia. This year he came back as part of Visma-Lease a Bike, the Dutch super team of Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard. He has more support than he ever did at Mitchelton-Scott (now Jayco AlUla) and he is the sole leader. He is also now in his early thirties, with stage wins in all three grand tours and numerous other stage-race victories. He is very different to the 25-year-old he was in 2018 and it has shown already in this race. It has been a mature and quiet first two weeks for Yates. He has done nothing spectacular, but is in the right place at the right time. He has kept safe and remained in the lead groups. Short, sharp climbs are not for Yates and while we may have seen him gunning for stages in the past, this year he appears to be playing the long game, waiting for the mountains. On the bike he looks solid. He performed well in both time-trials — perhaps the purest way to check a rider's form — and in the climbs he has looked strong. Yates hasn't missed a lead group yet, nor has he emptied himself in search of an early stage win. Meanwhile, his team is also growing around him. Wout van Aert appears to be finally coming into some form after winning stage nine into Siena. And Olav Kooij's win on stage 12 into Viadana will also have bolstered the team's confidence. They are also united. Yates is the undisputed leader and he's in second place. Visma will do everything they can to look after him, although perhaps they lack a mountain domestique like Sepp Kuss at this race. Meanwhile, their main rivals, UAE Team Emirates, are in something of a predicament. Their original leader, Juan Ayuso, has dropped back to third, 1min 26sec from the race leader, his team-mate Del Toro. Ayuso has been caught out multiple times with bad positioning and has on occasion looked ragged. Del Toro has looked excellent, but occasionally isolated. It was through his own positioning and race craft that he made the key move on Saturday, when a crash mixed up the general classification, not his team looking after him. And on Sunday, he himself had to chase down attacks from the former Giro winners Egan Bernal and Richard Carapaz. The issue is, perhaps, that Del Toro is an unknown quantity when it comes to a mountainous third week in a grand tour — that and Ayuso is the favoured child. UAE, then, will probably continue to hedge their bets, something Visma can play to their own advantage. If they can isolate Del Toro, or Ayuso, then some real damage can be done. There's no point being a super team if you're split in half. On the other hand, having two riders in the top three gives you cards to play against Yates. But so far, Del Toro seems to be doing it all himself. Yates has ridden a perfect, mature race so far. Now he'll have to deliver the performances, if indeed he does have the legs. A quiet two weeks for him has worked well, but you can't win the Giro d'Italia with whispers, he'll need to conjure his 2018 self to take on the Maglia Rosa. And what a story that would be. Seven years after Yates became the tragic hero of Italy, wouldn't it be wonderful if he could become just 'the hero'? Foreign travel completed the education of an English gentleman, now Yates has had plenty of that.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Giro d'Italia Stage 13 preview: Sharp uphill finish could provide stage for maiden Tom Pidcock victory
Stage 13 of the Giro d'Italia may prove to be lucky number 13 for Tom Pidcock, who has been denied a win so far but will no doubt be greedily eyeing the sharp uphill ramp to the finish line in Vicenza today. It's almost tailor-made for him, but Mads Pedersen - already on a hat-trick of stage victories and resplendent in the ciclamino jersey of the points classification leader - no doubt has his eye on it too as Lidl-Trek's brilliant corsa rosa continues. Advertisement Stage 13 departs from Rovigo in the Veneto for a 180km run to Vicenza, taking in four category-four climbs and another steep ramp up to the Red Bull kilometre at Arcugnano, just 11km from the line. Those slopes max out 13% on the 2.5km climb and could tempt the GC contenders to come out, potentially setting up for a manic finish as both the punchier sprinters and overall favourites battle it out for the stage win in Vicenza. Two intermediate sprints on the flat, 50km and 93.8km in at Noventa Vicentina and San Bonifacio respectively, will provide the fast men a dry run of their sprint trains - and yet more of a hunting ground for Pedersen to hoover up more points - but the finish itself looks less friendly for the purer sprinters. It's flat until around 1km to go, but then kicks up sharply, reaching highs of 12% and averaging a solid 10% for the final 750m. That should be enough to distance any pure fast men left from the bump at Arcugnano and set up for a reduced sprint of sorts. Route map and profile Giro d'Italia – stage 13 map ( Giro d'Italia – stage 13 profile ( Start time Stage 13 is set to start at 12.55pm local time (11.55pm BST) and conclude at 5pm local time (4pm BST). Prediction Mads Pedersen has been incredibly strong on the punchier finishes and Wout van Aert has had the enormous confidence boost of already winning one difficult stage, getting the better of Isaac del Toro on the uphill city centre finish in Siena on stage nine. Orluis Aular has had a couple of top-five finishes on similar stages too. Advertisement The Red Bull kilometre could draw the GC favourites into contention for the win, in which case no doubt Richard Carapaz would fancy another attack on a late climb. But this looks a perfect finish for Tom Pidcock. Three times a bridesmaid so far this Giro, with three top-five finishes on similar ramps to the line, he's in form and certainly overdue a win.
