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The biggest result of Tom Pidcock‘s second Tour de France won’t show up on his palmarès.
The bombastic Brit will leave the Tour without a stage win or standout GC placing, but with a rich bank of experience to draw from in his quest to become a grand tour great.
“This year I learned,” Pidcock said after his second-straight day in the break Saturday. “I’ve come away with nothing but I’ve come away with everything.
“I have a much better understanding of what it takes to win and succeed in this race in the GC. I think that is more valuable than winning a stage.”
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Pidcock’s second Tour came loaded with anticipation.
A blockbuster stage victory on Alpe d’Huez and 17th overall on debut last summer set British hopes ablaze that it could be witnessing the rise of its next Tour de France champion.
And Ineos Grenadiers was more than ready to back him in that bid. The Yorkshireman earned one of the longest contracts in the team and the back-room’s faith that he could deliver its first yellow jersey since 2019.
Pidcock’s huge ambition matched all the hype. For him, cyclocross world titles and mountain bike gold medals aren’t enough – the maillot jaune was next on his hit-list.
“Tom has got ambitions,” team boss Rod Ellingworth told Velo during the Tour’s first week. “His goal is always taking it one step further than he did last year.
“He doesn’t want to just win another stage here, he wants to do the next level, which is GC and learning where he can go, learning to be consistent and seeing what level he can hold.”
The mindgames of GC racing
When Pidcock wants to do something, he finds a way to make it happen. He rose to seventh overall in the first two weeks in a race where he was only “testing the waters.”
And Pidcock’s not easily satisfied, either.
So it was perhaps no surprise when his blazing start to the Tour had him pinning his hopes on top-5 on GC and a stage victory.
But when Pidcock crumbled on the road toward Morzine and hemorrhaged nearly nine minutes, he suffered the waves of doubt and sense of “imposter syndrome” stage 19-winner Matej Mohorič expressed in emotive fashion Friday.
Also read: Mohorič: ‘Sometimes you feel you don’t belong here’
“Matej’s interview yesterday resonated quite a bit with me. I felt like I was quite a bit of a pretender in the GC fight,” Pidcock said after the Tour’s 20th stage. “I was almost a bit afraid to fail, so I almost gave up before I properly failed. I think it’s more in the head than anywhere else.”
Pidcock was only able to open the pressure valve when he slid out of classification contention.
Renowned for his instinctive, aggressive verve, the all-terrain ace could step away from the conservative patience of GC racing in favor of two days of breakaway racing through the Jura and Vosges.
“When it kind of went wrong I questioned mentally … it was hard for me, the middle part of the Tour. But I am glad I raced these last couple of days,” Pidcock said Saturday.
“Today I didn’t win the stage, but I was up there and it was good that I finished the Tour on a positive note.”
‘Finishing fourth of the GC guys is great but no one will remember that’
Pidcock’s yellow jersey journey might pull into a lay-by for 2024.
He’s on a mission to defend his Olympic cross country MTB title and indicated next summer will be about nobbly tires and singletrack, not skinny tires and HC climbs.
Whether Pidcock will race back-to-back through the Tour de France before the late-July Paris Games is unknown.
But if he does do the double, he’ll land into the grand départ hungrier and more ambitious than ever.
“Each day I’m getting strong and more confident,” Pidcock told Cycling Weekly at the end of the race’s first week. “It’s all kind of new to me, I’ve never really been in the GC in a grand tour or any major stage race, so I’m learning every day.”
Pidcock’s already striving for bike racing legend with his all-terrain ambitions.
Lessons learned in 2023 will no doubt inform that quest for immortality.
“Finishing fourth of the GC guys is great, but no one will remember that in a few days, will they?” he said.
The Link LonkJuly 23, 2023 at 04:00PM
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Tom Pidcock learns the hard way in his Tour de France GC quest: 'I felt like a pretender' - Outside Magazine
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