Paris 2024: Tom Pidcock's unwavering will to win at Olympics produces his finest hour ... so far

Better than Tokyo when he reckons he wasn’t a favourite but nevertheless delivered that first Olympic gold on a mountain bike.

Better than anything he’s ever achieved on a cross-country bike.

Better, even, than that daredevil, high-wire act of descending off the Galibier in the Tour de France that set up a win on Alpe d’Huez in his 2022 road cycling breakout party.

Better than all of those because it packed so much about this great Yorkshire sporting hero into one race: determination, resilience, calmness, speed, daring and an unwavering will to win.

He also did it on the biggest stage, the Olympic stage, where the good become great.

He did it under the burden of being the defending champion, having said almost from the moment that he won in Tokyo that he wanted to come back and successfully defend his title three years later.

He would reveal afterwards that that fact bore an emotional toll that he hadn’t anticipated.

He also did it when everything seemed to be conspiring against him amid rising temperatures on the outskirts of Paris.

First it was a slow start that left him 12th after the first lap.

Then, after rising to third and then first place by overhauling Mathias Flueckiger of Switzerland, it was a puncture that allowed home favourite Victor Koretzky to overtake him on a jump.

“There’s no point in stressing over it,” said Pidcock, who after wheeling into the pits looked the coolest man in the rising heat of the quarry cauldron.

“That’s not going to help me get back to the front.

“Firstly I tried to race smoothly so Victor didn’t see. Then I didn’t make it clear enough to my mechanic that I’d punctured, but he did a pretty fast change when he found the wheel.

“I was lucky it happened early on so I could come back to the front.

“All I could do was stay calm and then come back as best I could. I wanted to come back to the front, that’s all I cared about.

“It’s not an easy course to overtake, especially when the race has exploded.

“I had a bit of free air in the last few laps.”

And then it was the time and positions he had to make up to get back to the front. At its worst he was down in ninth, 39 seconds adrift with a little over half the race to go.

After initially getting caught up in traffic, he got onto the front of the chase group and with three laps to go was still half a minute down.

“I took 15 seconds in one lap and thought okay, I knew I was going to be racing for the lead,” he said.

Within two laps the Yorkshireman had clawed back the deficit and reclaimed the lead.

All he had to do was hang on, but roared on by a vociferous crowd, Koretzky was determined that his own Olympic dream would not die so easily.

“Victor is the fastest guy in the last lap with the raw power he has,” said Pidcock. “I knew it was going to be super difficult going into this last lap, on this course as well which is super fast.”

Remarkably, the lead changed hands three times in the first three quarters of the final lap to leave Koretzky and the French fans dreaming.

But the great Pidcock had other ideas, attacking down the left side of a tree, getting to the racing line first and edging out Koretzky.

Legal? Yes. Ballsy? Hell yeah.

“In that position, I saw a gap and I went for it,” he explained.

“I knew if I could stay close to him that I could make a move in the last part where he was least expecting it.”

The boos at the end came more from French fans frustrated that their man who had led for so long had been pipped at the post.

But in the way Koretzky celebrated his silver and those Les Bleus supporters filled the air above Elancourt Hill with their songs and horns, there was no animosity between the two.

“It’s a shame,” Pidcock said about the smattering of boos, before quipping: “the French are very passionate, they wanted Victor to win. But they didn’t boo the rock that made me puncture.”

In the press conference afterwards, Pidcock was asked is he an Olympic legend?

Embarrassed, he swerved giving an answer.

After what he demonstrated at Elancourt Hill in a dramatic, nerve-shredding mountain bike event, Tom Pidcock showed that he is an Olympic legend.

“It’s why we work so hard, it’s why we sacrifice so much,” he concluded.

It’s why Olympic gold at Paris 2024 is his finest hour.

For now…