Leeds Olympic cycling champion Tom Pidcock begins quest for treble glory

Great Britain's Tom Pidcock reacts after winning gold in the men's cross country mountain biking at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan. Picture: PA

The 22-year-old from Leeds is among the favourites to win Britain’s first UCI Cyclo-Cross World Championship title in Arkansas on Sunday.

The absence of three-time winner Wout Van Aert through a shift in focus and defending champion Mathieu van der Poel due to injury helps his chances, as will the support he will receive from fellow Yorkshireman and Great Britain team-mate Ben Turner.

But it is also the experience of Tokyo that emboldens him with a belief he did not have two years ago when he finished second to Van der Poel in his first attempt at the elite race.

Great Britain's Tom Pidcock with his gold medal in the men's cross country mountain biking at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan. Picture: PA

“I’d never felt any pressure like (the Olympics),” the Yorkshireman said. “That was on another level.

“Now, coming to these championships, it’s easier to cope because I don’t think anything is going to be like Tokyo.

“I showed myself there that I can deal with whatever pressure so it’s easier to concentrate on the process when these championships are once every year, or three times a year for me.”

That last sentence is key, for in 2022 Pidcock is eager to prove himself to be the sport’s most versatile cyclist by winning world titles in cyclo-cross, mountain bike and on the road.

It would be an unprecedented trio of success spanning cyclo-cross in America in January, mountain bike in France in August and road in Australia a month later.

“I was worried initially that the road worlds wouldn’t suit me, and whether I’d even go this year,” said Pidcock, who was sixth in the road worlds last year and continues his education on that surface with a second season at Ineos Grenadiers that will be headlined by an appearance in the three-week Giro d’Italia in May.

“But looking at the course now there’s going to be a lot more climbing in it, and if that’s the case, that will be good for me.”

It could all start on Sunday with cyclo-cross – short-course racing which often requires riders to dismount around obstacles, usually while caked in mud - at which Pidcock has already won the world champion’s rainbow jersey at junior and Under-23s level.