'My best shot' - Yorkshire's Tom Pidcock eyeing world road race history
As a two-time Olympic champion, a Tour de France stage winner and an accumulator of multiple world titles on different sets of two wheels, Tom Pidcock has pretty much done it all.
But even he acknowledges the prize he rides for on Sunday - and has a good chance of grasping - would be “pretty special”.
For the 27-year-old Yorkshireman is co-leader of the British Cycling team in the UCI Road Race World Championships in Montreal.
Win that, in a race blown wide open by the absence of the dominant Tadej Pogacar - and a rainbow jersey for world champion might just top the lot.
It would also place him on the pantheon of Britain’s greatest ever cyclists, with only Doncaster’s Tom Simpson in 1965 and Max Missile Mark Cavendish in 2011 having previously won the men’s road race world title.
“It would be something that would be truly amazing in my career,” said the 27-year-old.
“I just see it as that regardless of everything else because it’s going to be so hard to win.
“I think this is the best opportunity of my career, that’s for sure, but having said that I think the depth is so deep I might not even stand on the podium. It’s quite an open race but it could be my best shot so far.”
Pidcock knows his cycling history and his standing within that as one of this country’s most versatile performers.
Just last month he won the world championship title in mountain biking for a second time, to go with the two Olympic gold medals he has won on that bike.
If he prevails on Sunday, not only will he become the third British man to do so but just the seventh from this country, two having come from Yorkshire in Beryl Burton (1960 and 1967) and Lizzie Deignan 11 years ago.
“I'm very aware of the British history in cycling. That's why when Cav won, it was so special,” said Leeds lad Pidcock.
“The Tour de France success that we've had, it's not normal, shall we say. So I think it's not to be taken for granted. But then again, it's the same for most countries, so that's why it's a World Championship, that's why it's one of the most important races of the year.”
Since finishing ninth in the general classification at the Tour de France in July, Pidcock has barely raced on the road.
As is his wont, he focused on the mountain bike to get ready for the world title he won on August 30.
He then won a one-day road race in Italy on his return to the road before heading to North America for a high-altitude training camp, breaking off just twice to ride the Grand Prix de Quebec and Grand Prix de Montreal where he finished sixth and fourth.
“The race in Montreal felt like it took forever,” he said of a course that follows a similar path to the one the world championship will be decided on.
“The first eight laps, it just felt like an eternity. And then when we started racing, it was good. It went quickly. It was hard.
“I think it's a course that favours saving yourself for one big move. If you ride attritionally and make efforts all the time, then I think in the end it's difficult to then make the proper difference to get people off your wheel. With the length of climbs, it's definitely a course that suits me, that's for sure.”
In the absence of Pogacar, Pidcock believes Isaac del Toro and Paul Seixas are the two primary favourites for Sunday’s 273km race, after they finished slightly up the road in first and second in the Grand Prix de Montreal two weeks ago.
That race took in 16 laps of the circuit that will be ridden 12 times on Sunday. Although the world championship race is considerably longer, it starts out in Brossard with a ride around the surrounding region before heading into the city.
He will share leadership duties of the GB team with Adam Yates, a chief Pogacar lieutenant in recent years and a winner of the Montreal grand prix in 2023.
But Pidcock is maturing into a leader himself, his drop down to the second-tier Q36.5 Pinarello team from Ineos Grenadiers two years ago proving a masterstroke as it has allowed him to flourish.
“I guess it's definitely something that I've grown into because before in Ineos, even when I was leader, I kind of, in a way, struggled to ask for what I wanted because there were so many big names and experienced riders,” said Pidcock.
“And I guess now coming to this team, I felt a bit more obligated, almost more responsibility that I had to lead and ask for things because I understood that people were there to support me. I've got much better at that role as a leader.”