After finishing ninth overall at the Tour de France in July, Tom Pidcock returned to mountain biking at the World Championships in Val di Sole to win the men’s elite XCO title for the second time in his career.

Despite only having ridden one World Cup event so far this year, which he won at Nové Město in May, the British rider once again proved to be too strong for his competition, beating many of the world’s best riders to reclaim the rainbow jersey that he last won on home soil at Glentress Forest in 2023.

Starting from thirty-fifth on the grid, Pidcock navigated the traffic and scythed his way through the field on the opening laps to move himself up towards the front of the race. By the end of lap four of eight, the double Olympic champion had fought his way onto the back of the leading group of Martín Vidaurre, Adrien Boichis, Cole Punchard and his British teammate Charlie Aldridge.

A mistake on an uphill section through the forest on the fifth lap saw Pidcock lose ground, as he was forced to put a foot down after getting his tyre caught on a root. However, he quickly composed himself and gradually worked his way back to the leaders, remaining at the back of the five-rider group for the rest of the lap as he took some time to recover.

After some brief respite, Pidcock came to the front at the start of the sixth lap, putting in a massive attack on an uphill section, which distanced Punchard off the back of the group. He then continued to push on through the remainder of the lap, with the other three riders battling to stay in his wheel.

Another dig through an uphill section then saw Boichis distanced, leaving three riders at the head of the race. With the Frenchman dropped, Aldridge and Pidcock began to work to drop Vidaurre, but the Chilean continued to hold on as they went onto the seventh lap.

However, the pace of the British duo ultimately proved too much for Vidaurre, as he began to lose ground and was ultimately dropped. It would now be a battle between Aldridge and Pidcock to decide the victory, with the recently-crowned European champion continuing to battle in the wheel of his more experienced compatriot.

A brilliant move from Aldridge then saw him go down the inside of Pidcock through a sweeping right-hand berm on a downhill section, pulling out a small advantage over his teammate. However, Pidcock quickly worked to get back into the wheel, before attacking on the next uphill section, just as Aldridge was pausing to take a drink from his bottle.

Centimetres then turned to metres for Aldridge as Pidcock began to open up a gap over the Scottish rider. The Yorkshireman then continued to power away, as Aldridge began to pay for his earlier efforts.

As they went onto the eighth and final lap of the race, Pidcock had a nine-second lead over his teammate and was continuing to press home his advantage in what was quickly becoming a complete show of domination.

Meanwhile, a rear-wheel puncture for Martín Vidaurre saw him fall to fourth place, whilst Cole Punchard produced an incredible comeback to move himself into a medal position in third place as they began the final lap.

A valiant effort from Charlie Aldridge saw him continue to fight on, but he was simply unable to match Tom Pidcock, who held his bike aloft as he crossed the line to become World Champion once again.

Aldridge then came home to complete a British one-two and claim his second silver medal of the week, after finishing runner-up in the short track event on Friday, whilst Punchard also held on to finish third ahead of a disappointed Vidaurre and Boichis in fourth and fifth respectively.

Elsewhere, it was not a good day for Mathieu van der Poel, who finished four minutes and forty seconds behind Pidcock in thirtieth place, whilst double World Champion Alan Hatherly suffered misfortune with an early puncture and finished in forty-third place.

In his post-race interview, an emotional Pidcock dedicated his victory to the late Finlay Tarling, who died aged 19 years old in a crash at the Volta a Portugal earlier this month.

“I don’t have many words to be honest,” said Pidcock. “It was a hard road here after the Tour. I just want to dedicate this win to Fin Tarling and to Josh, seeing him start the Vuelta was incredible, so I want to dedicate this to his family.”

Having only raced his mountain bike once so far this year, Pidcock’s form was unclear going into these championships, but he once again proved himself to be the best rider in the world at this discipline.

“I knew it was a course where you really couldn’t overpace yourself and you had to ride within your limit,” he said. “I crashed pretty badly in practice on Friday and my back was hurting from the first lap. I really couldn’t go any harder, so I’m lucky that the pace I could hold was good enough to get to the front. On the last two laps I just had to push whatever I could and see if I could try to stretch that gap before a final sprint, and yeah, that was a pretty hard race.”

Always a balancing act between his road racing commitments and his ambitions in other disciplines, Pidcock laid out his plans for the next two years ahead of the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, where he will be looking to win a third-consecutive gold medal in the cross-country event.

“Next year, I’m not going to do as much mountain biking,” Pidcock stated. “I’ll focus on the road and then return to mountain biking before LA the following year, but I’ll need to find the time to come and wear those bands.”

Pidcock is set to return to home roads at the Tour of Britain next week, with the race passing through his home county of Yorkshire on stages three and four.

Results

UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026, Men’s Elite Olympic Cross-Country

1. Tom Pidcock, Great Britain, in 1:25:26
2. Charlie Aldridge, Great Britain, +17s
3. Cole Punchard, Canada, +31s
4. Martín Vidaurre, Chile, +59s
5. Adrien Boichis, France, +1:06
6. Mathis Azzaro, France, +1:47
7. Dario Lillo, Switzerland, +1:54
8. Filippo Colombo, Switzerland, +2:02
9. Fabio Püntener, Switzerland, +2:04
10. David List, Germany, +2:08

The two pre-eminent mountain bike racers in men's road racing are about to be reunited on fat tyres for the first time since 2023.

Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) are set to ride the Whoop UCI MTB World Cup round at Les Gets in France this weekend, with the XCO taking place on Sunday. It will be the first time the pair have raced mountain bikes against each other since the test event for the Paris Olympic Games in September 2023. On that occasion neither rider placed highly, with Van der Poel 28th and Pidcock 36th.

The Mountain Bike World Championships will be held the following weekend at Val di Sole, Italy, with both riders expected to race there too.

Of the two, only Pidcock, the two-time MTB Olympic champion, has raced MTB already this year. He won the Nové Město round of the World Cup in the Czech Republic back in May, as well as coming second in the short-track event there. Pidcock is a former world champion.

The Dutchman, on the other hand, has not raced on knobblies this year. His last race was the World Championships last September. On that occasion he finished well down the pack after a promising start, afterwards he blamed illness, saying: "I haven't been feeling well for a while."

Away from the mountain bike, Van der Poel has enjoyed a successful season this year, kicking it off with victory in the Cyclo-Cross World Championships in Hulst, Netherlands. He also netted a brace of Tour de France stage wins in July, including on the final day in Paris, when he escaped with overall winner Tadej Pogačar and held off the chasing field by a whisker. It was, he said afterwards, "something you wouldn't even write in a story book".

Pidcock, too, has enjoyed his high points this season, if in a less flamboyant manner. After taking a somewhat ad hoc approach to his Tour de France, he recorded a personal best ninth on GC in Paris, as well as taking two third places on stages. Away from the Tour, he took second place in Milan-San Remo, a whisker behind Pogačar, and won a handful of smaller races, Milan-Torino the most prestigious.

In light of the upcoming Worlds, whether they will leave everything on the trail this weekend remains to be seen, but it will be a treat to see these MTB masters racing against each other again.

Tom Pidcock took a moment to compose himself as he reached his team after the finish line of Alpe d'Huez on stage 20 of the Tour de France. The man from Leeds, distinctive in his Red Bull helmet, covered his face with a blue towel, and listened as his soigneur held his face and geed him up, made him realise what he'd just achieved.

Unlike the previous day, this was not a completely emptied Pidcock, but one satisfied with his achievement of all but sealing ninth place at the world's biggest bike race.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider finished 16th on Saturday, 9:03 behind stage winner Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), but defended his overall place, taking time on 10th-placed Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies). It means, barring disaster, Pidcock will achieve his first ever top 10 result at the Tour.

Pidcock has had a combative race, twice finishing third on stages, but did not quite get over the line for his second stage victory. However, a second Grand Tour top 10, and a first at the Tour, satisfied both the 26-year-old and his team.

"I think I'm very happy," he said after finishing atop Alpe d'Huez for a second day in a row. "I think top 10 in the Tour, I can be very proud of. Of course, I'm ambitious, I look forward to next year to try and improve it. For now, I can be very happy. It has been an unbelievably hard race. I don't know if the race tomorrow is neutralised, but I hope it's neutralised."

Asked how difficult the day was, he replied: "From the first climb... the first 20 minutes we went so hard, I thought it was going to be a fucking long day."

Pidcock did not have an ideal run-up to the Tour, with illness forcing him to skip the Tour de Suisse, and seemingly affecting his training as well.

"I would have signed for that [ninth] coming into this race, knowing the disruption I had in the lead up here, I can be very happy," he continued. "I'm ambitious, I look forward to next year, I'm already thinking about things I can improve on to get a better result and be close to these other guys, but for now I can be happy."

There is the small matter of the final stage in Paris on Sunday, which on paper could suit a rider like Pidcock, although the course might not be hard enough. However, in reality, it has come at the end of a hard race.

"First of all, we go to the race and see how it is," he said. "I look forward to the finish line to be honest."

Having finished top 10 at the Tour, on top of his third place at the Vuelta a España last season, Pidcock now knows where there are gains to be made: "When I'm in my best shape I have consistency, and I didn't have that coming into this. That's what I missed I think, consistently working and getting better every training session. That's good for me."

For now, though, there are 89 kilometres in between Pidcock and a well-earned rest – not a beer though, he is not a fan.

The last time Tom Pidcock rode up the Alpe d'Huez at the Tour de France, it was one of the performances of his career. The then 22-year-old flew up the famed climb to take his first – and to date only – Tour stage win, and to mark his name on the world of cycling.

That was in 2022. Four years on, the now Pinarello Q36.5 rider, aged 26, is older and wiser, but also now the owner of an opposite experience on the Alpe. Instead of tasting victory once more, Pidcock finished 20th on stage 19 of the 2026 Tour , 8:22 behind the stage winner and yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

"That second last climb I went so deep, I think I paid for that on the last climb. I was dead there," he said at the finish.

"Of course [there are positives to take from the stage] Yeah, what a day. I hoped for more. But there was nothing more I had in my legs there. It is was it is."

There might have been positives, but stage 19 was a bad day for Pidcock; not only was he not able to recreate his heroics from four years ago, he also slipped down on the general classification, being leapfrogged by Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost). What looked like a comfortable eighth place is now an edgy ninth, with Pidcock leading Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies) by under two minutes. It should be enough, but with a chaotic penultimate stage to come, anything might happen.

His comments post stage 18 on Thursday were prescient, warning of Carapaz: "When Carapaz is up the road, I have too much respect for this guy to give him free time. You don't give him free time."

The EF rider is chasing the mountains classification, but has also found himself in the top 10 on GC; he is just 15 seconds ahead of Pidcock, so it will all come down to stage 20, also to Alpe d'Huez.

Despite the disappointment, Pidcock could still find time to enjoy his second time racing up the Alpe at the Tour: "It's incredible you know, the amount of people who come here and watch bike racing. It's amazing. The atmosphere. Thank you to everyone who comes out and makes it so magical."

Tom Pidcock will focus on general classification for the rest of the Tour de France, he said, after his attempts to get into the break on stage 18 failed.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider, who sits eighth overall at the Tour, a result which would be his best ever finish at the French Grand Tour, said post-stage that any attempt from him to get up the road was closed down on Thursday.

"It wasn't possible to get in the break, no-one wanted me there," the 26-year-old said. "I already know from before the race that I was on people's black lists to not get in the break. I wanted to try one more time, but I guess now [I will] focus on the GC until Paris."

The man from Leeds has been in the break four times at this year's race: stage nine to Ussel, where he finished third, stage 13 to Belfort, where he again finished third, and then the twin stages last weekend, 14 and 15, where he went up the road to build a buffer before the final climb.

However, with just two more stages to come, both finishing up Alpe d'Huez, it is tricky to see a situation where Pidcock will be allowed up the road until Paris. However, his top 10 seems incredibly secure, with the Q36.5 rider having over 11 minutes on ninth-placed Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies).

On Thursday, Pidcock finished with the yellow jersey group, 4:35 behind stage winner Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), who moved up to 10th overall as a result. "[It was] not an easy day, but the last climb was fairly controlled I think," Pidcock said. "When Carapaz is up the road, I have too much respect for this guy to give him free time. You don't give him free time."

The other story of the day was illness at UAE Team Emirates-XRG, which Pidcock played down having a great effect on the battle for yellow, despite Brandon McNulty abandoning the race.

"It's not good for them, they definitely weren't in a good way today," he said. "But I think, to be honest, these next two days, it's about the other teams fighting for the podium. I don't think UAE will have that much work to do."

Tom Pidcock returned to the Tour de France this year as leader of the Pinarello Q36.5 outfit after his ProTeam failed to earn a wildcard for the 2025 edition. To celebrate the occasion, the team is sporting a special, lighter-coloured switch-out kit with matching bike liveries.

The Yorkshireman’s size 53 Pinarello Dogma F is a very different bike to the one we covered at Opening Weekend: gone is the Classics-ready 1x configuration, and in comes a pragmatic 2x drivetrain to ensure everything from the flats and gradients to the serpentine descents are dismissed without issue. For the faster average speeds of the Tour de France, he’s opted for the lighter and mixed-depth 53/58mm Zipp 454 NSW wheels and shod them in 30mm Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed time trial tyres.

Colour-wise, the Dogma F looks resplendent in its blue-to-gold matte-metallic fade – officially dubbed by Pinarello as ‘Titan and Luxter Venice’ tones. Not only are the Pinarello wordmark and Dogma F logos finished in gold, but the Zipp decals get the same treatment. It’s a wonderfully balanced and thoughtful design.

As a SRAM-sponored team, Pidcock’s Dogma F is built around the American brand’s top-tier Red AXS groupset, complete with an integrated power meter. A 54/41T, 10-36T chainset provides a balanced, albeit taller, spread of gears, paired with 165mm carbon cranks. There’s also a nifty little Leap Components 3D-printed computer cradle (something we saw liberally used on his Pinarello Bolid F TT bike) that houses a Garmin Edge 850 and a 10mm spacer under the stem – proving slammed front ends are no longer de rigueur among the pro rungs.

The touchpoints comprise a 360mm Most Talon UltraFast integrated handlebar matched to a 120mm stem, complete with a 10mm spacer underneath, Shimano Dura-Ace PD-R9100 pedals, and a new Prologo Choice saddle that features a similar carbon-fibre rail shroud as the Predator TT saddle. The balance of the build includes Tacx Ciro bottle cages with Tacx-Garmin bidons.

All in, Pidcock’s bike safely meets the UCI minimum weight limit of 6.8kg with pedals.

Pinarello Dogma F specs

• Frameset: TorayCa M40X, TiCR
• Fork: eTICR Onda Fork with ForkFlap
• Cockpit: Most Talon Ultra Fast integrated cockpit
• Seatpost: Pinarello Aero
• Groupset: SRAM Red AXS, 54/47T, 10-36T
• Wheelset: Zipp 454 NSW
• Tyres: Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed 28mm
• Saddle: Prologo Choice
• Weight: 6.86kg (with pedals)

Tom Pidcock has never finished in the top 10 at the Tour de France. The Pinarello Q36.5 rider has come close before, with 13th in 2023, but three years on, the 26-year-old is days away from what would last as one of the biggest results of his career.

There are just five stages left of the 2026 Tour de France, and Pidcock lies in eighth place overall, after Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) crashed out on Tuesday. The man from Leeds also has 9:52 over the rider in ninth place, TotalEnergies' Jordan Jegat. He wouldn't want to call it yet, to put a curse on himself, but it is likely that he has already penned his name into a debut top 10 at the world's biggest bike race.

Speaking after stage 16's time trial, in Thonon-les-Bains, Pidcock said: "Top 10 unless something goes badly wrong, it's reasonable to say it's achievable. I think I'm far enough down that I could try and get in some more breakaways. Top 10 is great for me and the team, but obviously I want to try and win a stage too."

The individual time trial has never been Pidcock's strongest suit as a pro rider, with the former junior world time trial champion never finishing higher than fifth in an elite TT. However, on stage 16, he averaged 45.464kph, only dropping 2:07 to stage winner Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), the reigning world champion.

"I don't know how I finished there, but I know at the top of the climb I was fastest time for everyone who has been before me," he said post-race. "I don't know if I faded there, I also took it slow down the descent. It was a scary descent with those walls. That might be the best TT I've ever done. Good for fuck all training I do on this bike."

As for the final week, Pidcock will keep trying to get that stage win, and simply try not to lose too much time in the Alpe d'Huez stages.

"I don't have the level I had in the Vuelta [a España] last year," he explained, after he finished third at that race. "In these mountain top finishes I'll lose a couple of minutes every time. A breakaway's a good way to get ahead. I do think I'm getting stronger. Yesterday, I felt my legs after my three days in the break. That was probably the easiest rest day ride I've ever done. When I was going I felt super strong. If it was a 20 minute climb I would have done my best ever 20 minutes on a TT bike."

“Tom Pidcock’s in that group,” my colleague Tom said to me atop Le Markstein as, for the first time, we watched the race cross the finish line on Saturday’s stage 14 of the Tour de France, straining as everyone else did to watch the action unfold. My answer was probably not as succinct as “no, he can’t be”, but it was something similar.

In between the rain storms in the Vosges, we managed to get a glimpse of the actual action – the first time I’d actually seen the bike race I’m writing about in person in the nine days I’d been out here. It might surprise readers how little journalists at the Tour actually see of the Tour, or how hard it is for us to keep up with what’s going on in each stage as it goes on, as we encounter a series of logistical hurdles, from driving, to checkpoints, to buying lunch as the press room has no food again.

I had completely missed Pidcock’s presence in the first chase group, in front of the peloton, as they powered past us on Le Markstein, and it did seem unlikely, hence my sense of disbelief. The day after the Pinarello Q36.5 rider had escaped up the road to Belfort, flying up to fourth on general classification, he was there again. Surely, the original effort had taken it out of him, but on checking the race situation, there he was, outstandingly. Not to win, necessarily, but to try and build a buffer on the GC riders behind him, before the final climb.

Looking back at the video I took of them cresting the climb, on Pidcock’s wheel was Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek, the American champion standing out in his stars and stripes jersey. He hadn’t been out in front the day before, but the pair had both been away in another of the race’s key breakaway days, on stage nine to Ussel.

The next day, there they were again, on the road to Plateau du Solaison. Both Pidcock and Simmons made it into the day’s escape, and were there until the final climb, Simmons essentially the final man to be caught by the group of favourites.

Neither Pidcock nor Simmons have won a stage yet at this Tour de France, but few could accuse them of not trying; between them, they have three stage podiums, and a handful of most combative prizes between them. Aside from the riders at the top of the general classification and the stage winners, they have been my standout riders of this year’s race, always visible, always trying.

As Pidcock put it post-stage 15: “Has anyone ever been in the breakaway three days in a row in the top 10? I don’t think so. Tadej [Pogačar] can break loads of records, but so can I.”

The Briton is in the odd position of being in the top 10, in ninth, but being eight minutes ahead of his nearest rival, Jordan Jegat of TotalEnergies. Therefore, he can put energy into trying to get up the road, to animate the race. Top 10 overall at the Tour would be huge for Pidcock, and his ProTeam, but a stage win would probably mean more. He almost has a free role in this final week.

Simmons is almost doing his own thing; he helped his Lidl-Trek teammate Mads Pedersen to a stage win on stage five, and has put work into the green jersey challenge, and Juan Ayuso’s bid for the top five, but has also seemingly got into the break whenever he wants to.

There might be some Anglophone bias at work here – credit should be given to Lotto Intermarché’s Baptiste Veistroffer for his efforts out front too – but while the yellow jersey battle has been over for almost two weeks now, I’m glad Simmons and Pidcock have kept active, kept heading up the road, kept trying to do something different. The Tour de France is better for them. With five more chances, can either get the stage win they crave? Either way, they will be in the breakaway once again, standing out.

This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.

Tom Pidcock was fined 400CHF (£370, $500) and docked 20 seconds in the general classification of the Tour de France for ‘pushing off a car’ on stage 15.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider was judged to have committed the offence twice during the stage, in which he spent more than 100km in the breakaway.

Each offence carried a fine of 100CHF and a 10-second penalty in the general classification. Pidcock was also docked 30 points in the UCI rankings and eight points in the Tour’s mountains classification.

The time penalty ultimately changed little for Pidcock, who is ninth in the overall standings going into Monday’s rest day, nine minutes and five seconds clear of TotalEnergies rider Jordan Jegat in tenth.

“The last climb, the last 5km, I was crawling up, just trying to get to the top. Completely f***ed,” he said after the stage, having crossed the line 13th, almost three minutes behind the winner atop the Plateau de Solaison, Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe).

The Briton was part of the breakaway on Sunday for the third day in a row at the Tour. “I’m getting quite good at getting in the breakaways,” he said. “Has anyone ever been in the breakaway three days in a row in the top 10? I don’t think so. Tadej can break loads of records but so can I.”

Pidcock was one of four riders fined on stage 15; Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost) received a 500CHF (£460, $620) fine for 'feeding on foot outside the feeding zone; Jan Tratnik (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) was fined 200CHF for a sticky bottle; and Tim van Dijke (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) was fined 200CHF for feeding from his team car in a fixed feeding zone.

One other rider has been docked time at this year's Tour; Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) received a 20-second penalty on stage 10 for unauthorised feeding during the last 15km.

Giles Pidcock remembers a conversation he had with his 12-year-old son, Tom, about what it meant to truly ‘make it’ in cycling. “My view of success was getting paid to ride your bike, being a pro,” he says. His son had grander ideas. “Tom said, ‘F*** that. No, no, no. I want to win Paris-Roubaix, the Tour de France, the World Championships’,” Giles laughs. “His aspirations were just unlimited, and that struck me as being quite ambitious. But that’s Tom, isn’t it? Everything’s possible.”

It was four years earlier, when Tom was eight, that his passion for the Tour took root. Every July he would wait for his father to get home so they could watch the daily highlights on TV. If they were heading out for an evening ride, they’d record the broadcast to watch when they got back. It was only natural, then, that when Tom turned pro with Ineos Grenadiers in 2021, the race became a central ambition of his career.

But over the three editions he raced with Ineos, his enthusiasm for the event faded. He would describe it variously as “draining” and “not the most enjoyable”. Where had the excitement gone? Now, after a year away, Pidcock is back on cycling’s biggest stage. Riding for Tour debutants Pinarello Q36.5, he is on a mission to rediscover the joy that filled those childhood evenings.

“To find passion, you first need to, well, enjoy it. It’s all an upward cycle,” he tells Cycling Weekly in Tarragona, Spain, at the start of stage two. Perched on the top tube of his bike, he shelters beneath a canopy of trees in the media zone. When his team press officer limits the gathered journalists to a single question, Pidcock pushes back. “One question?” he says, before happily answering four.

It is all part of a new lease of life the 26-year-old has brought to the race. At the time of writing, he is fourth on GC, thanks to time gained in a smart breakaway move on stage 13. But Pidcock has always insisted his goals this time around are less tangible than a stage win or a high GC finish. “I want to enjoy being back at the Tour, and look forward to coming back here every year,” he says. “That’s the main thing. The rest is just a bike race, you know?”

To understand Pidcock’s fraught relationship with the Tour, you need to rewind four years to Alpe d’Huez in 2022. Pidcock wasn’t supposed to start the race that year. “When he joined Ineos [in 2021], we had a six-year plan with Dave [Brailsford],” says Pidcock’s father Giles. “It was going to be Cyclo-cross Worlds, Mountain Bike Worlds, one-day races, win a few Classics, and just have fun for as long as possible.”

But then, in only his second year as a pro, as the team scrambled to find a leader following 2019 champion Egan Bernal’s life-threatening training crash, Pidcock was thrust into the yellow-tinted pressure cooker. He responded brilliantly. Aged just 22, he broke away on the descent of the Col du Galibier on stage 12 and soloed to an awe-inspiring victory on Alpe d’Huez, becoming the youngest rider ever to win at the mountain’s summit.

“That’s one of the best experiences of my life,” Pidcock said at the finish. His career path seemed laid out. With hindsight, though, his father views the win with mixed feelings. “I think the Alpe d’Huez stage almost wrecked his career,” he says bluntly. “At the time, we were really excited because it’s the Tour. Then he won the stage, and everyone was like, ‘Oh, you’re ready. You can do this. You’re the next big hope.’ Everything from that moment was about winning the Tour.”

The following year, 2023, Pidcock returned to the Tour under a weight of expectation, targeting the GC. He finished 13th, faltering in the second week as the race entered the Alps, and admitted he felt like a “pretender” among the favourites. The 2024 edition proved an even bigger struggle. After catching a stomach bug ahead of the Grand Départ in Florence, he was dropped on Ineos’s pre-race training ride and faced a battle to regain his form. He ultimately withdrew ahead of stage 14, sitting 36th overall.

Some questioned whether Pidcock was truly cut out to be a GC rider. Why wasn’t it working? According to Kurt Bogaerts, his coach since 2018, bigger aspirations were eclipsing his Tour goals. “He’s tried to become world champion in all disciplines, and one big goal [in 2023] was becoming world champion on the mountain bike,” Bogaerts says.

“In Glasgow, it was a home race, and that was a big target, so you have that in the back of your mind… The year after [2024], it was the Olympics, and he had a massive goal to be double Olympic champion. That was only a few weeks [after the Tour].”

Pidcock’s relationship with Ineos had also soured. Reports of a rift with management surfaced at the 2024 Tour, and by the end of the season, he decided to leave despite having three years left on his contract. “By the end at Ineos, nothing was good enough,” one source close to Pidcock says. “Unless you won the Tour de France, it didn’t matter. No one cared.”

While around half a dozen WorldTour teams sought the Briton’s signature, he surprised many by opting for second-tier outfit Q36.5, backed by billionaire former Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg. The hope was that a smaller set-up would provide a fresh outlook. “I believed it was the best option for him,” says Jacques Sauvagnargues, a friend and former Team Wiggins teammate who later co-founded the app Link My Ride with Pidcock.

“I was trying to explain to him how [Mathieu] van der Poel went to Alpecin and they built the team around him. I just said, ‘That’s what you need. You need the team built around you. You had it with Wiggins and Trinity and you flourished in those environments.’”

Sauvagnargues’s theory soon proved right. Last year, Pidcock’s first season with Q36.5, the 26-year-old opened with victory at the AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia before riding to third overall at the Vuelta a España in September – a career-best Grand Tour performance. “I think he proved everyone wrong,” Sauvagnargues says.

For Bogaerts, the podium was “confirmation” of the talent he had helped hone over the years. Why had it all suddenly clicked? A key factor in his Vuelta success was riding unburdened by expectation. “Every performance is a kind of celebration,” Bogaerts says of Q36.5’s ethos. Pidcock’s past Tour experiences, challenging as they were, had also taught him to manage pressure. But another simple, often overlooked reason drove his upturn in form: he started prioritising fun.

Sauvagnargues recalls a recent example: at the end of April, he and Pidcock went to Germany’s Nürburgring to drive race cars. The trip fell just days before the Eschborn-Frankfurt one-day race, yet Q36.5 approved it as a way for Pidcock to unwind. “I’m not sure if Ineos allowed a lot of the play, but with Q36.5, they appreciate that it’s quite an intense lifestyle that [the riders] live, and they need to release,” Sauvagnargues says. “Tom’s release is car track days… He’s an unbelievable driver. He could be a professional if he wanted to be.”

Pidcock also found fun this year at an early-season altitude camp in Chile, where he trained hard and explored new trails on his mountain bike. British champion Fred Wright, Pidcock’s teammate at Q36.5, was one of six riders who travelled with him to South America. “It was a bit of an adventure,” Wright says. It also proved critical for team building.

“We played quite a bit of [the dice game] Perudo and a bit of poker. In the end, we had a big leaderboard of games and whoever had the most points at the end of the camp won the prize pot we’d all put money into.” Who claimed the haul? “Tom – on the last night,” Wright laughs. “I was gutted. I was leading and I lost it all.”

Trips like this have led Pidcock to praise Q36.5’s “family vibe”. “Everyone around me believes in me, supports me. We’re all in this mission together,” he told the Going Mental podcast in June.

Bogaerts, who also attended the Chile camp, has witnessed this first-hand. “I think the connection with the team is, of course, much stronger,” he says. “He is the leader there, he feels responsible for the team, he wants to look after the team, and that means a lot to him.”

In the moments after the opening team time trial at this year’s Tour, Pidcock cooled down in the middle of a row of turbo trainers, shoulder to shoulder with his teammates. While other teams did the same in silence, the Q36.5 comrades nattered away, laughing as they compared stories of the day’s test. Yes, Pidcock had lost almost a minute to stage winner Jonas Vingegaard and 45 seconds to Tadej Pogačar, but that mattered little. The important thing was that he had remained true to his sole race aim: he was smiling.

Speaking before the start, in the shadow of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família, after the team presentation, he had said: “If I finish in Paris, I’m happy, then it’s been a success.”

Of course, that won’t stop people asking what he’s capable of over the coming mountain stages. Four years on from his Alpe d’Huez triumph, the Tour returns to the same climb on its final weekend for a brace of summit finishes.

Fans might wonder if that presents the chance for the perfect full-circle moment – the ecstasy of that first Tour win, after years of indifference, repeated – but it’s not the be-all, end-all for Pidcock. His ambitions have always stretched far beyond the confines of a single event. The hope, perhaps, is that by riding at the Tour less weighed down by expectations, he might now fulfil his potential at the race.

“I think goal number-one is to try to win a stage,” his coach, Bogaerts, says. Pidcock’s already come close: on stage nine to Ussel, he placed third behind Van der Poel from the breakaway, let down not by his legs but a jammed gear shifter. “Today, I was really in the game,” he said proudly afterwards. Three days prior, the Tourmalet stage, he’d lost eight minutes to a rampaging Pogačar, but remained philosophical. “It’s not the end of the world,” he shrugged at the hill-top finish in Gavarnie-Gèdre, true to his new philosophy. “Just got to keep the spirits high.” Then came his third place on stage 13 to Belfort, and his leap back into the GC mix.

To pose to his father the same question he had asked his 12-year-old son: what does ultimate success look like? “Well, anything’s possible,” Giles says. “He’s surprised me enough times to know that anything’s possible.” That childhood dream may still be realised one day – and if it is, you can be sure it’ll be on Pidcock’s own terms.

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 16 July 2026. Some elements have been updated to reflect the results of stage 13.

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Despite just nine seconds separating Tom Pidcock from the Tour de France podium after stage 13, rival teams professed that they were not worried by his rise.

After infiltrating the day's break, the Pinarello Q36.5 rider ended up gaining 7:34 on his general classification rivals, which moved him up to fourth. He's now seven seconds ahead of Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), 20 seconds ahead of Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM), 29 seconds ahead of Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), and seven seconds behind Remco Evenepoel (also Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) remains far ahead in the lead, obviously, and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) is over 30 seconds ahead, but the GC has been shaken up. It could be enough to make other riders and teams uncomfortable.

However, sports directors at both Red Bull and Lidl-Trek remained confident that giving up so much time to Pidcock, who finished third at the Vuelta a España last year, would not hurt their chances overall.

Asked if he was concerned, Red Bull's Patxi Villa told Daniel Benson: "Not really. I mean, the effort of today will come tomorrow... What he did today was a move, you have to measure a bit what you do now. I believe that was a super ride, but I think there will be a cost, a bill will come. Not tomorrow, then sometime."

Steven de Jongh, DS at Lidl-Trek, concurred. "That's not too worrying," he said. "The gap we gave to Pidcock is just minimal. I'm not underestimating him, but I think he had a different run-up to the Tour than he had to the Vuelta. Of course, you cannot exclude him, but I'm happy where we are now. It's a different picture, but for us it's still good."

The key, according to both, is that both stages 14 and 15, plus the time trial on stage 16, will prove who the real podium contenders are.

This weekend sees back-to-back mountain stages, with Saturday a battle in the Vosges, counting three category-one climbs, before the first hors catégorie summit finish of the race on Sunday, to the Plateau de Solaison. There follows the second rest day, after which there is a 26.1km individual time trial, potentially the weakest of Pidcock's suits.

"Tomorrow is a master stage, so to keep the team good, we just pulled when we had to," Villa explained. "When the gap goes a bit too much, it's too much... being together it's ok, but giving more time to a guy like Tom, that would not be comfortable. That's why we pulled the last 4km of the climb to the finish line.

"It's a risk you take, but we wanted to keep the team together and as comfortable as possible, and we entered into the action when it was getting critical. Tomorrow will be a big fight, one of the biggest of the Tour probably. We are facing here one of the key moments of Tour. Tomorrow will give a pretty clear idea."

De Jongh agreed: "The next two days are super hard, then the rest day and the TT, and things will change. Tomorrow is super hard, it's a full GC day, like Sunday is. It's a very hard stage, we reconned it and it's very hard."

Pidcock's rivals might feel calm about their chances of overcoming the Pinarello rider in the rest of the race, but it does still seem like a mistake to give him this time that they will still have to fight to take back. The Tour moves on, and in 24 hours the top 10 could be changed again, but for now, the Briton's will feature more significantly in other teams' morning briefings.

Only a fool would brush aside Tom Pidcock’s chances.

That’s the message from Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling after the Briton rode himself into contention as a potential Tour de France podium finisher following a gutsy ride on stage 13.

The 26-year-old was the highest-placed GC rider in a huge 57-man break as the peloton headed away from central France and east into the mountains. Before the flag dropped, he was 11:49 down on the yellow jersey of Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and 7:43 adrift of Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) in third.

Just over four hours of racing later, and after finishing third in Belfort, Pidcock had jumped from 10th to fourth overall, now sitting just nine seconds shy of Evenepoel.

This weekend poses arguably the two toughest tests to date, with the Vosges mountains set to be the setting for high-stakes action which will almost certainly produce another reordering in the GC.

As he proved at the 2025 Vuelta a España when he finished third overall, Pidcock can climb in the high mountains and maintain his form in the last week of the race. So did the likes of Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe and Lidl-Trek make a needless mistake in letting Pidcock back into the podium picture?

“I don’t think you should ever underestimate a double Olympic and double world champion,” Doug Ryder, manager of Pinarello Q36.5, told Cycling Weekly. “He’s a great rider and he showed last year at the Vuelta that he can sustain three weeks of high-level riding.

“Tomorrow is a tough day and we’ve got to see how he recovers from today. He’s not making things easy for himself as he likes to ride really hard, but we’ll take it day by day, and see how he feels and how he’s going.

“It’s such a tough last week that you can easily lose 10 minutes in a stage – you could lose 10 minutes on Sunday in Paris if your legs aren’t great – so there’s so much to race for. But that’s cool.”

Pidcock’s main goal on the road from Dole to Belfort was to win the stage, in what would have been first since he won at Alpe d’Huez on debut at the 2022 Tour. He and his other breakaway companions were unable to bring eventual victor Mauro Schmid and Harold Tejada back into the fold in time, but Pidcock was still the day’s big winner.

“For sure Tom is disappointed he didn’t win, I’m sure of that, but in the end you’re on a fine edge with both options. I don’t think he did anything wrong in terms of going for a stage win,” Ryder said.

“I’m really happy for him because as a team we went all in today and they committed everything to go for a stage win. The bonuses that come with that are great for Tom and for our team.”

However the next eight stages play out, Pidcock will not change his approach. “What’s lovely about him and our team is that we’re still creating excitement in this race and I think it brings another perspective and dimension into this race,” Ryder added.

“And that’s what I love about Tom: he’s an impact rider and when he does something he does it with purpose, and that’s pretty cool to see.”

Tom Pidcock said he’s “back in the game” at the Tour de France, after clawing back more than seven minutes from the breakaway on stage 13 and climbing to fourth overall.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider finished third on the stage to Belfort, attacking out of a front group that contained 57 riders – a third of the entire peloton – and finishing behind the tearaway leaders, Harold Tejada (XDS Astana) and Mauro Schmid (Jayco AlUla), the latter of whom won the stage.

“Of course I’m disappointed for the stage,” Pidcock said afterwards. “I’m ambitious, I want to try and win, that’s the main thing. But we take the positives.”

The biggest positive was a remarkable fight-back in the general classification. Having lost almost 10 minutes on stage six in the Pyrenees, Pidcock managed to propel himself from 10th to fourth, just nine seconds off Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) in third.

There was even a moment during the stage when the live timings had Pidcock as virtual second overall.

A repeat of his Vuelta a España podium last year, he told the media post-stage, is now a real possibility.

“It’s certainly good,” he said. “I’m back in the game after the Tourmalet [on stage six]. In the Vuelta, I was getting better in the race. First week I was getting dropped, losing time. It’s all to play for.”

Around 100m beyond the finish line in Belfort, Pidcock pulled up on his bike and stopped in front of his Pinarello Q36.5 soigneur, who placed a towel around his neck, as if toasting his ride with a wreath.

The Briton then took a bottle of water and emptied it over his face, before he was rushed to the podium, where he received the day’s award for the most combative rider.

“I was close again, third again, but obviously we took a lot of time in GC and I’ve got a gold number tomorrow [as the winner of the combativity award],” he said.

“I’m straight back in there with the podium fight, but I know realistically with the time trial I’m going to lose a lot.

“We’ll see what the next days bring. Today obviously was a big day, but we’ll take it day by day. Today we didn’t really know exactly what we wanted or wanted out of it. In the end, we were in the break, going for the GC and the stage, so every day brings something new.”

The race goes deeper into the mountains this weekend, with a summit finish to Le Markstein on Saturday, and the race’s first hors catégorie finale on the Plateau de Solaison on Sunday.

Following Monday’s rest day, there will be a 26.1km time trial into Thonon-les-Bains, which counts a second-category climb and 500m of elevation within it.

“For sure a top-10 is very realistic now,” Pidcock said of his GC prospects. “I know for sure I’m going to lose a lot of time in the time trial, so a podium is going to be difficult, but we’ll see.”

Anyone who watched Sunday's ninth Tour de France stage will have felt a pang of empathy for Tom Pidcock as, heading downhill towards a potential breakaway victory, a gear change was followed by pedals spinning uselessly, rather than with any kind of resistance.

After all, who has fluffed a gear change, or perhaps crashed into the small ring when it wasn't needed, and been left spinning out?

In Pidcock's case, though, his SRAM shifter had apparently stopped working, rather than there being any mistake on his part. Most onlookers drew the conclusion that something had malfunctioned. However, according to the team, a piece of bitumen had wedged itself behind the shifter, preventing him from changing gear.

Incredibly perhaps, given the frustrated kicking the British rider wrought upon his rear mech, presumably believing it was jammed, it continued to work using the shift lever's upper 'bonus' buttons, located on the lever hoods. Unfortunately, these weren't ideally placed for a sprint finish and Pidcock finished a disappointed third.

Some might assume that the team's explanation was a carefully constructed piece of face-saving, with the real issue some kind of oversight, such as a run-down shifter battery. Or perhaps a straightforward malfunction.

However, Glen Whittington of UK manufacturer Eight Bike suggests the bitumen explanation is far from impossible – because a very similar thing happened to him.

"If something gets wedged in behind – a bit of grit, a bit of clay, something like that, then yeah, it just stops that one button from working," he told Cycling Weekly. "Actually, it's also a benefit of SRAM, that you actually do have the option then to carry on using the [bonus] button on the top."

The bonus button is a feature of SRAM Red and Force AXS levers – a tiny square button on the inside top of each lever hood, facilitating gear changing when in the hoods. And it doesn't work if the lever battery runs flat, which nullifies any theory about that being the case.

"If the coin cell battery was low, the button on the top wouldn't work either," Whittington says. So if the button on the top is working as it was at the end, then the coin cell is up to date. But that's the kind of thing that they would check on the [SRAM] app pretty regularly, anyway. Especially with someone like him. At that level, they're going to be checking that on a daily basis."

"[A flat lever battery] just wouldn't happen on these guys' bikes," Whittington adds. "I mean, I worked for a Conti team last year, and even with us, we would be changing those batteries for a stage race. So for every stage race, they'd get a new set of coin batteries in there just to rule that out, basically."

As to whether you should be concerned about it happening to you – especially if you're running Apex or Rival, which don't feature bonus buttons – it feels very unlikely.

"I wouldn't say it's a design flaw as such because it's obviously such a freak thing," said Whittington. It had never happened to any of his customers, he said, nor any of us at Cycling Weekly for that matter.

So, keep those shifter batteries fresh and feel free to ride easy.

Contacted by Cycling Weekly SRAM reiterated that this had not been a malfunction and referred us to the stage summary the team released that evening.

It said: "A small piece of asphalt mixed with bitumen somehow became lodged inside the right-hand lever, preventing it from making the normal movement required for shifting.

"Nothing had broken. With approximately 24 kilometres remaining, Pidcock managed to free the chain and get the bike moving again. However, although the drivetrain was operational once more, the piece of asphalt remained lodged inside the lever, preventing him from using the full range of gears for the remainder of the stage."

For the second successive stage, Tom Pidcock suffered bad luck at the Tour de France – this time crashing on a bend on the descent of stage 10’s third-from-last climb.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider was nestled in the middle of the second group just after the race crested the Pas de Peyrol when he slid out on some chalked road and landed next to a parked car.

He held his left hand and grimaced as he got to his feet, but he appeared to be mostly unscathed and remounted his bike within seconds. He eventually chased back onto the group chasing Richard Carapaz who at the time was leading the stage before Tadej Pogačar counterattacked him and won.

Pidcock’s crash came just two days after a small stone lodged itself in his shifter during stage nine, preventing him from changing gear in the finale. He was one of four riders from the breakaway to contest the finish line sprint which was won by Mathieu van der Poel.

“My tyres lost grip on the tarmac and I fell on the floor,” Pidcock told Cycling Weekly at the end of stage 10, pointing to his bike’s rear wheel.

“People were saying some luck should be on my side now but maybe not yet [it is].”

Pidcock, a two-time Olympic mountain bike champion, used his descending skills to rejoin the front of the peloton. He finished 1:59 behind Pogačar and now sits 10th overall in the general classification.

Chasing stage victories from the breakaway remains his biggest goal during the second half of the race.

“It was pretty good, I think,” he reflected on the day. “I just missed that front group – we’ll disregard Pogačar shall we? – but I’m definitely getting a bit stronger.

“I couldn’t hold on with Isaac [del Toro] on the final climb but it was good. Racing on the front, fast all day, [and] I felt comfortable until the final. It’s a bit more enjoyable when you’re not the one suffering all day.”

It looked like it was all over for Tom Pidcock. With 23km to go on stage nine of the Tour de France, the Pinarello Q36.5 rider sat up in his saddle, gestured down to his bike, and wafted his right arm in frustration. A mechanical – at the cruellest time, on one of his best days – appeared to have put him out of a four-up breakaway finale.

He spun his pedals briskly, and still the gears would not kick in. Then, after a moment of panic, he was riding again, back into the lead group, and on to the finale in Ussel.

Pidcock ultimately placed third in the sprint, behind the day’s winner Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility). But it wasn’t a clean dash for the Briton. Afterwards, as he warmed down in the shade of his team bus, he explained what had gone wrong.

“In the final, my shifter stopped working,” Pidcock said. “I was out the back of the group on the last climb, and then I realised that the top button [the satellite shifter inside the hood] was working.

“Then once I got to the sprint, I was focused, and I was just instinctively on the drops and I couldn’t change gear anymore. Then I had to go on the hoods. It’s a shame.”

Pinarello Q36.5 later said the problem was caused by “a small piece of asphalt mixed with bitumen” that had become lodged in Pidcock’s gear lever.

In previous near misses at the Tour – namely on stage nine in 2024 when he placed second to Anthony Turgis in Troyes – Pidcock has cut a dejected figure beyond the finish line. On Sunday, however, he returned to his team bus smiling, hitching a lift on the back of his team-mate Quinten Hermans’s bike.

The finale may not have played out how he wanted, but the performance showed his form is there.

“I think I was going super-well today,” Pidcock said. “I had really good legs, feeling strong. If I compare it to the last time I was in the breakaway at the Tour de France in the gravel stage, where I was second two years ago, today I was really in the game. That definitely shows that my level is higher.”

Pidcock had a stilted run-in to this year's Tour de France. He abandoned the Volta a Catalunya in March after crashing into a ravine and suffering ligament damage in his right knee. He then pulled out of June's Tour de Suisse, his final Tour tune-up, due to a viral infection, leaving him lacking in stage race preparation.

All things considered, then, his third place on Sunday left him feeling "not so disappointed".

“I don’t think I would have come round [Mathieu] anyway,” he said. “I’m quite happy. I’m just pleased that I could change gear in the end, and that I was not in the peloton. At least I was there sprinting for the win.”

Tom Pidcock and Pinarello Q36.5 kick off their 2026 Tour de France campaign with a challenging 19.6km team time trial around Barcelona's iconic roads on Saturday.

Pidcock comes into the three-week Grand Tour among the GC favourites and will be looking for the best possible start, which will require a strong, well-executed team effort. As the leader of Pinarello Q36.5, he has a host of riders to support him, including newly crowned British National Road Race Champion Fred Wright.

As a multi-discipline rider, Pidcock has myriad bike options at his disposal, but will naturally be riding a Pinarello Bolide F time trial bike. While his teammates will use the same bike, albeit with the regular navy-blue-and-gold livery, the Yorkshireman will ride a unique black-and-gold-themed machine.

Let's get into the details.

The Pinarello Bolide F underwent an update in 2024, borrowing technologies from the Bolide F HR – the bike used by the men’s and women’s Italian track teams in the Olympic endurance events. Look closely, and you'll notice the ribbed, drag-reducing edging on the seat tube and seatpost called AirStream technology.

The front end is fairly high, with a dual-stack, five-spacer system that supports custom one-piece bar extensions by Most. While the cups use standard foam padding, two 3D-printed strips - like the lattice structures you'll find on some saddles - are located on each extension to support the forearms.

The Bolide F is outfitted in a full SRAM Red AXS groupset, including a power meter. Pidcock has opted for a fairly traditional 1x gearing configuration comprising a single 60T chainring that drives a 10-36T cassette via very short 160mm cranks. While the X-Sync narrow/wide tooth profiling should keep the chain in place, there's a Wolf Tooth chainkeeper for added security.

Look closely, and you'll notice that the BB ends of both crankarms have been filled with 3D-printed plugs to smooth the surface and possibly save a few watts . There's also a waxed chain.

The wheels come compliments of Zipp. In this case, an 858 NSW front and Super-9 solid rear disc wrapped in surprisingly 'narrow' 28mm Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed tyres – no doubt a personal choice and aerodynamic decision. The Bolide can accommodate tyres as wide as 32mm, so the chosen configuration is far from maxed out.

Because SRAM only supplies its wireless blips with adhesive tape, to improve the look and ergonomics, Pidcock has used a 3D-printed Leap Components Aero Grip Blip Mount for the brake levers and TT Shift assembly to neatly house the blips. It looks super refined and also adds extra grip when holding the basebar during cornering. While Leap products are becoming popular among riders and teams who use SRAM, we're told Pidcock sourced these items himself.

The Prologo Predator saddle has become a popular choice for riders during time trials, thanks to its aero and ergonomically optimised shape. Pidcock's one is the new 02 version, which gets added padding and grip from Connect Power Control technology strips along the top. This model is constructed from injected carbon fibre and uses a standard Nack (nano carbon-fibre) 7x9mm rail - and is compatible with any seatpost. At £520 a pop, it's not a cheap component, but at 163g it is light and promises a 6.4-Watt saving over the previous model.

The finishing touches include a pair of Shimano Dura-Ace PD-R9100 pedals and a Taxc time trial bottle cage.

With many fully built time trial bikes tipping the scales at between 9-10kg, Pidcock's Pinarello Bolide F weighed in at a feathery 8.85kg.

Pinarello Bolide F TT bike specs

• Frameset: TorayCa 1100G, TiCR
• Fork: Bolide TT Onda Fork with ForkFlap
• Cockpit: Custom Most TT basebar and extensions
• Seatpost: Pinarello Aero
• Groupset: SRAM Red AXS 60T, 10-36T
• Wheelset: Zipp 858 NSW front/ Super-9 Disc rear
• Tyres: Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed 28mm
• Saddle: Prologo Predator 01//TT
• Weight: 8.85kg (with pedals)

Tom Pidcock will lead Pinarello Q36.5 at its first appearance at the Tour de France, it was confirmed on Wednesday afternoon,

The 26-year-old returns to the Tour this season after missing the 2025 edition due to his ProTeam not being invited; with Pinarello Q36.5 on the start line, the Yorkshireman returns.

He will be joined by British champion Fred Wright, alongside Xabier Mikel Azparren, Chris Harper, Quinten Hermans, Damien Howson, Xandro Meurisse and Brent Van Moer.

The Tour returns to Alpe d'Huez for two stages this July, for the first time since Pidcock won atop the mountain in 2022. It remains his sole stage win to date, although he did come close with second-place on the gravel stage to Troyes in 2024. He finished third overall at last year's Vuelta a España, his best Grand Tour result to date.

Wright has finished in the top 10 on stages eight times, coming second once in 2022. He is yet to win a race other than the British National Championships, but has finished second twice this year. Harper rode the Giro d'Italia in May, and won a stage at the same race last year.

Team principal Doug Ryder said: "From day one, the Tour de France has been a clear objective for this project. To now be on the start line is an important step, but more importantly, it reflects the consistency of the work that’s gone into building this team.

"We come with a group that combines experience, versatility and the mindset we want to race with. Our approach is simple we’ll race proactively, look for opportunities every day and make sure we’re present throughout all three weeks.

"This milestone goes well beyond the eight riders selected. It’s the result of years of commitment from the staff, the belief within the organisation, and the support of our partners Q36.5, Pinarello, UBS and many others who’ve helped create an environment where performance can grow.

"Being here is significant, but for us it’s not an end point. It’s another step in the progression of the team."

The team are riding in a special kit for the Tour, in a lighter hue, "to give the riders a distinctively fresher summer-weather look and feel while standing out clearly in the peloton throughout July".

Tom Pidcock will not start the Tour de Suisse on Wednesday after missing training days due to a mild viral infection.

The Briton was due to lead Pinarello Q36.5 at the five-stage race as part of his preparation for the Tour de France, which begins in less than three weeks.

Instead, and "health permitting", Pidcock will compete in the one-day Andorra MoraBanc Classica on 21 June, his team said in a statement.

"Following a small number of missed training days at the teams altitude training camp in Sierra Nevada due to contracting a mild viral infection, the Pinarello Q 36.5 Pro Cycling Team has decided to amend Tom Pidcock’s June race programme to allow for additional recovery and training time," the team said.

"As such the Tour of Switzerland has been removed from his race calendar to be replaced, health permitting, by the Andorra MoraBanc Classica on 21 June.

"While disappointed to miss the Team's home race, Tom has returned home to Andorra where he will continue to train and is now very much looking forward to competing on his adopted home roads around the mountains of Andorra.

"Further updates will be provided in due course."

The team made no mention of changes to Pidcock's plans for the Tour de France, where he is still expected to compete.

The 26-year-old last competed at the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Nové Město, Czech Republic, on 24 May. The Olympic champion won the cross-country event, and finished second in the short track the same day. He hasn't competed on the road since he placed second at Eschborn-Frankfurt on 1 May.

Earlier this month, Pidcock travelled to Sierra Nevada, Spain, for a pre-Tour training camp with his Pinarello Q36.5 team-mates.

He has said he will not target the general classification at this year's race, despite finishing third at the Vuelta a España last September.

“This year I’m not going with any expectations,” he said on the Fredono Going Mental podcast. “I want to race, and I want to have fun, and the rest will come. If I’m not saying, ‘Ok, I want to win a stage, I want to podium, I want to be top five,’ or whatever it is, then there is nothing to fail at.”

The Tour de France begins on 4 July with a team time trial in Barcelona, Spain.

Tom Pidcock wants to retire after the 2036 Olympics, he revealed in an interview this week, with his biggest goal being the World Championships road race.

In an wide-ranging interview with The Guardian, published on Wednesday, the Pinarello-Q36.5 rider also argued that he could win a Grand Tour "in the right situation", but that riding them does not excite him.

The British rider will return to the Tour de France next month after missing out last year, due to his team not being invited; a year on, he will be able to race at the biggest race of all once again. It follows his best Grand Tour result to date, third at the Vuelta a España last year.

"The Grand Tour thing doesn’t really excite me so much, but it’s an achievement," he said. "If I manage to win a Grand Tour it will be the biggest achievement in my career, because for me to concentrate for three weeks is difficult.

"But I want to win the road worlds. Then I will have won all three disciplines. And the gravel worlds, actually, but if that never happens I’m not so bothered. I want a Monument. And for sure, I’m going for three Olympic medals. My goal is to finish my career after five Olympics, so after the 2036 Olympic Games I’ll retire."

Pidcock has already won two Olympic gold medals, both in cross-country mountain biking, and also been world champion in cyclo-cross and XC MTB.

There is now evidence that Pidcock can perform consistently over three weeks, something he is now taking confidence from. However, the Tour is a step up from the Vuelta, with Tadej Pogačar presence being the biggest challenge.

"Everything I’ve ever achieved in my career, I’ve always imagined doing it first before I’ve done it," he explained. "I’ve never done anything out of the blue, like magic. So having that stepping stone, I know I can be on the podium again.

"I’m not saying that I have the ability right now to beat Tadej and [Paul] Seixas and [Jonas] Vingegaard. But in the right situation, I can see it happening. And with the right situation, I can win a Grand Tour."

This year, he has won three times, and notably finished second at Milan-San Remo behind Pogačar, on top of the five wins he took in 2025. It is an uptick in form since he left what was then Ineos Grenadiers for Q36.5.

"I’m a lot happier," he said. "It’s no secret that it was not going well at Ineos. It’s brilliant and I also think you see that in my results. But we left on good terms."

Tom Pidcock resumed his preparation for the Tour de France by winning the cross country race at the Mountain Bike World Series in Czechia.

Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5) hasn't raced since finishing second at the Eschborn Frankfurt on May 2nd, but returned to the dirt in search of form and a fifth win at the Nové Město course.

Riding for Pinarello Q36.5, Pidcock has a had a good season on the road, winning Milano-Torino, with taking stage victories at the Vuelta Andalucia and Tour of the Alps. He also took a nail biting second place behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) at Milan-San Remo in March. However, a knee injury sustained in a terrifying crash the Volta Ciclista a Cayalunya has disrupted his preparation for July's Tour de France.

Pidcock is slated to return to the road at the Tour de Suisse in the middle of June. However, as a former world and reigning and double Olympic mountain bike champion, Pidcock used this weekend's World Series races in Nové Město to both accrue qualification points and as part of his preparation for the summer's challenges.

The weekend's racing consists of both short course (XCC) and the longer cross-country races (XCO), Pidcock finishing second in the XCC and winning the XCO on Sunday. His win was definitive, hitting the front on the first of eight laps, though he lost that place, when he returned to the lead on the following lap he stayed there. Despite a tough battle with French champion Luca Martin, Pidcock held him off to win by 18 seconds.

Pidcock seemed to take it easy during the early laps of Saturday's short course race, remaining n last place until the fifth lap when he moved up through the pack, taking a place at or near the front next time round.

On the closing lap Pidcock attacked hard on the back of the course, stretch the bunch before opening his sprint on the uphill, tarmac drag to the line, only to be pipped at the post by Mathis Azzaro (Origine Racing Division).

In the women's events, Britain's former world champion, Evie Richards (Trek Factory) recovered for a late crash to finish fifth in Saturday's short track event, but suffered a a big off on one of the course's technical descents and failed to finish the cross country race.

Next month Pidcock will tackle the five day Tour de Suisse, which consists of three lumpy stages, a flat individual time trial and conclude with a brutal mountain stage. Starting and finishing in Villars-sur-Ollon, the 151km stage will surely decide the general classification, and with Pogačar on the provisional start list the outcome could be a foregone conclusion.

Tom Pidcock has posted onboard footage of himself driving a Porsche 911 GT3 RS around the Nurburgring in Germany setting an impressive time on the famous track less than two months before the Tour de France

Sharing the video on Facebook with the caption “a week for a mental refresh before a big summer,” the double Olympic mountain bike champion was clearly pushing very hard on the section of the German circuit used by enthusiast drivers, a loop that excludes part of the main straight from the full Nordschleife layout used by manufacturers for official lap records.

The 6 minutes 52.37 seconds time is a quick one by amateur standards. Some quick research uncovers that capable enthusiast drivers in stock 911 Carrera S models typically post bridge-to-gantry laps in the 7:35 range: Pidcock is more than 40 seconds clear of that benchmark, albeit in a significantly more capable car.

The 992-generation GT3 RS, with its enormous rear wing, is the most track-focused 911 Porsche currently builds, with active aero, a 9000rpm rev limit, and 518 horsepower from its naturally aspirated flat-six engine. In the hands of Porsche’s professional development drivers, the same car has lapped the full Nordschleife in 6:44.

The footage shows Pidcock driving at high speed in fifth gear, with the GT3 RS in track mode and with DRS active, F1-derived technology designed to help him go as fast as humanly possible.

A spokesperson for Pinarello-Q36.5 told Cycling Weekly that Pidcock likes fast cars and that the trip formed part of a planned recovery period within his training programme.

“Tom has a long-standing passion for cars and this was simply one of the ways he chose to unwind during a planned rest period. The activity took place in a structured and controlled environment, was carried out responsibly, and happened during a scheduled recovery period within his programme,” the spokesperson said.

Pidcock will lead Pinarello Q36.5 at the Tour de France in July, the team's first appearance at the race as automatic invitees following their promotion among the top-ranked WorldTour pro teams. His Spring season has so far included second place at Milan-San Remo behind Tadej Pogacar, victory at Milano-Torino, and a stage win at the Tour of the Alps in his comeback from a heavy crash at the Volta de Catalunya. The Tour de France begins in Barcelona on 4 July.

Tom Pidcock sprinted to victory on stage three of the Tour of the Alps in Arco on Wednesday, less than a month after crashing into a ravine.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider out-powered Tommaso Dati (Team UKYO), the rider who beat him to the line on stage one, to take his third win of the season. Not normally known for his sprint, Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) finished third.

Pidcock's Pinarello Q36.5 team had hunted down the early two-man break of Sam Oomen (Lidl-Trek) and Darren Rafferty (EF Education-EasyPost), and delivered Pidcock to victory.

Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) finished in the front group at the same time as Pidcock, maintaining his small lead in the general classification over Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers), whose team-mate Egan Bernal scooped bonus seconds to move into third on GC.

"I think this win feels really nice," said Pidcock afterwards. "I mean, I'm struggling… well, I've been struggling. The first climb I was dropped and just made it over the top. So yeah, it feels even nicer than normal to win. The guys committed 100% to me, which is super nice, considering it wasn't evident that I would be there to finish it off."

He added: "The last time I was racing, I was in amazing shape. And, you know, today would have been relatively comfortable, to be honest, and now I was suffering, at the back. It's difficult to get your head around it and find enjoyment in that because it's pretty uncomfortable. But that's why it feels so good to finish off.

"I went too early for that last corner," he said. "I thought it was sooner when the barriers started and yeah it was quite far, so I was a bit worried. But I saw Egan [Bernal] was the first guy on my wheel, so I thought… Egan is not slow, but I can beat Egan in a sprint and I just went full to the line."

Pidcock's coach Kurt Bogaerts was at pains to point out that the win does not mean Pidcock is back on top form. It was his sprinting ability that carried him through, he said, and his near-seven-minute loss yesterday was a better indicator of his overall shape.

"It's a victory that he was able to be on the [Tour of the Alps] start line after his crash," Bogaerts said. "It's basically a hard training week to try to pick up some condition, and not make the gap between Catalunya [where he crashed] and the Tour too big with no racing. It was a complex injury, and we worked really hard with the team to help him recover and be able to go on the bike.

"I think Tom never in his life, was not able to do 11 days of anything, not even running, even in the off-season," Bogaerts said. "But that needed to be respected for the healing."

He added: "We were able to train a couple of days, and now it's just suffering in the race to try to get better. If it's really nice a day like today, if you can ask for the commitment of the guys, and then you can win the stage."

Despite moving up 18 places, Pidcock remains a long way down on GC in 42nd place, 6:46 down.

Tomorrow's stage four sees the riders undertake a big mountains stage over 168km from Arco to Trento, with 4,111 climbing metres. It is sure to prove a tough day out for Pidcock, but it would be no surprise to see him move further up the GC.

Results

Tour of the Alps 2026, stage 2: Latsch > Arco, 174,5km

1. Tom Pidcock (Gbr) Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling, 174.5km in 4:23:24
2. Tommaso Dati (Ita) Team Ukyo
3. Egan Bernal (Col) Ineos Grenadiers
4. Luca Paletti (Ita) Bardiani CSF 7 Saber
5. Alexandr Vlasov (Rus) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe
6. Sean Quinn (USA) EF Education-EasyPost
7. Chris Hamilton (Aus) Picnic PostNL
8. Jacob Omrzel (Slo) Bahrain Victorious
9. Florian Storck (Ger) Tudor Pro Cycling
10. Ben O'Connor (Aus) Jayco-AlUla, all at same time

General Classification after stage 3

1. Giulio Pellizzari (Ita) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, in 11:13:06
2. Thymen Arensman (Ned) Ineos Grenadiers, +4s
3. Egan Bernal (Col) Ineos Grenadiers, +6s
4. Mattia Gaffuri (Ita) Picnic PostNL, at same time
5. Alexandr Vlasov (Rus) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, +10s
6. Mathys Rondel (Fra) Tudor Pro Cycling, +19s
7. Jacob Omrzel (Slov) Bahrain Victorious, +29s
8. Chris Harper (Aus) Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling
9. Alex Tolio (Ita) Bardiani CSF 7 Saber
10. Michael Storer (Aus) Tudor Pro Cycling, all at same time

Tom Pidcock has said that his plunge into a ravine at the Volta a Catalunya last month has not affected his famous descending prowess.

"It was just a combination of a few factors, and then it all went wrong," the Pinarello Q36.5 rider told Cycling Weekly ahead of the first stage of this week's Tour of the Alps. "So if one thing hadn't have happened, then I wouldn't have crashed. So it was an unfortunate event, it wasn't so much taking risks, or making a mistake or going beyond my limits. It was just a stupid accident."

The 26-year-old was a last-minute addition to his team's roster for the five-day stage race, which spans Austria and Italy – a decision taken after it became apparent that the ligament damage to his knee and a stress fracture to his tibia had healed sufficiently for him to ride.

"I basically didn't train for two weeks, so it wasn't ideal," he said on Monday when asked about the impact of the crash on what had been some excellent early-season form. "I think I was in really good shape, but sometimes that's just how it is."

Pidcock won Milan-Torino, as well as placing a close second behind Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) at Milan-San Remo, and seventh in Strade Bianche.

He credited a month spent in Chile at altitude as playing a part in that form, but adds: "We've worked hard, and I've built on last year, I've kept improving and improving. I think it's normal at my age that I should be improving every year."

Despite those two weeks off the bike he says cycling has actually been "relatively easy" on his injuries, meaning he could progress fast.

With the Ardennes races, which started on Sunday the with Amstel Gold Race, originally forming the major goal of Pidcock's season, he still plans to race Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday, two days after the Tour of the Alps finishes.

For this week, he says: "I think anything is a bonus, any result I get or whatever is a bonus. I'm feeling really quite good in training, but it rarely relates to the racing."

Among Pidcock's rivals at the Tour of the Alps will be defending champion Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling), Egan Bernal and Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers) and Giulio Pellizzari (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe).

Tom Pidcock pronounced himself "very lucky to be OK" after his potentially catastrophic fall into a ravine at last week's Volta a Catalunya.

But for all Pidcock's insistence that he is alright, the team is taking a cautious approach to his recovery. His Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling team boss Doug Ryder has now said that it is not yet clear when he'll be able to start riding again.

Speaking to Domestique, he said: “There’s no firm idea or understanding when he will be back on a bike or racing at the moment. We’re just trying to get the fluid off the knee and the swelling down and all that kind of stuff, so we just have to wait.

He added: “As the swelling goes down, we can start to use the CT scans to understand more of the details. There’s been some trauma there, but it all depends on how he responds, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

“We’d rather be a bit more cautious," he said. "The knee has many joints and facets to it, so you’ve got to be quite cautious around that. We’re being cautious to make sure that he has a good recovery, and we don’t push it too early.”

After a post-crash medical evaluation, Pidcock's team announced that he'd hurt his wrist and knee and had sustained bone and ligament damage. Pidcock himself posted images of his swollen knee on social media and added: "I'm going to self-proclaim as a ninja crasher, 60kph off a mountain road and I'm relatively OK."

Pidcock was one of a number of riders to come down on the descent of the penultimate climb on stage five of the Spanish stage race, which was won that day, and overall, by Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike). He had been sitting in third place on GC at the start of the day, but lost more than 30 minutes as he rode carefully to the finish. He did not start the next day.

Following Catalunya, the Yorkshire rider was due to resume racing in Belgium at De Brabantse Pijl – scene of Pidcock's first professional victory – on 17 April, before going on to race the Ardennes Classics and then the Tour de France in July.

However, any racing this month now hangs in the balance as his team try to ascertain the full extent of any damage.

Tom Pidcock pronounced himself "very lucky" to be alright after crashing into a ravine on stage five of the Volta a Catalunya on Friday, although it was revealed on Saturday that the Briton had suffered knee and wrist injuries.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider was one of a number of riders who came down on the penultimate descent of what was a major mountains day, the Collada de Sobirana. The drop into the ravine was described in a team statement as "significant".

He did not start stage six as a result, after medical evaluation.

“Due to his crash, he suffered injuries, most likely bone and ligament damage, in particular to his right knee and also right wrist," Lorenz Emmert, Chief Medical Team Doctor, said in a team statement.

"Unfortunately, we had to make the decision to take him out of the race.

"Further clinical evaluation and imaging will follow in the next days, additionally to the already initiated healing process.”

“We did everything to try to make it to the start but it’s not possible,” Pidcock added

"I fought to finish the stage yesterday [Friday] to make sure I had the option to continue. Now the focus is on recovery, and I’ll be back.”

After a change of bikes on Friday, he was able to continue, but with a final major climb still to go, Pidcock ended up losing a lot of time, coming in 116th, 29:04 down on stage winner Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike). He also fell from third overall to 74th, dashing any GC hopes for the seven-stage race.

“I was drinking on the descent and misjudged a corner," he said in a statement after the stage. "I overshot it and went down the ravine. It was like one of these horror crashes you see, but I’m very lucky that I am OK. I'll go for a check but I think I'm OK.

“I am lucky I could talk on the radio," he added. "I was far from the road and nobody knew I was there. I’m happy I could finish the stage.”

The Yorkshire rider has so far enjoyed a highly promising season, placing third overall at the Vuelta a Andalucía and a heartbreakingly close second to Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) at Milan-San Remo. His Volta a Catalunya had been going swimmingly too, with third places on stages one and four, and a sixth place on stage three – all of them lumpy and testing.

Pidcock's next block of racing was set to start in mid-April, with Brabantse Pijl followed by Ardennes Week.

The difference, after six and a half hours, was a fraction of a second. Only a bike throw could separate Tadej Pogačar and Tom Pidcock at Milan-San Remo, and the Briton, having held the world champion so masterfully on a leash, finished a rim’s width short.

Pidcock’s feeling in the aftermath was bittersweetness. He told reporters in the mixed zone that he was “pretty disappointed”, but nonetheless proud of his ride: “What I did was quite amazing,” he said.

Although there was no Via Roma win, no toppling of the world’s best rider, the second place signalled something pivotal: Pidcock is in the realm of the greats. A Monument victory now seems only a matter of time away.

For Pidcock's coach, Kurt Bogaerts, it's all about progression.

“Tom, for me, is an example of continuous work,” Bogaerts told Cycling Weekly two days on from Milan-San Remo. “He searches his limits every year. With workload and intensity, it’s building on the year before and progressing on that. That’s what Tom does already year after year, and that’s where you see a continuous trend of improving.”

Bogaerts has worked with Pidcock since 2018, when the Yorkshireman was racing as a teenager in the British domestic circuit for Team Wiggins. The year Pidcock signed for Ineos Grenadiers, 2021, Bogaerts joined the team as an assistant sports director, and then followed his mentee last year to Pinarello Q36.5.

“In the last years, his physical strength has really come up,” Bogaerts said. “People in the beginning maybe thought he did a lot on skills, but I never saw him like that, to be honest. If, as a junior, you win the World Championships time trial [as Pidcock did in 2017], then already at a young age you show a lot of physical capabilities.”

Proof of that progression came at last year’s Vuelta a España. Though a stage win eluded him, Pidcock rode commandingly to his first Grand Tour podium, earning third overall. His second place at San Remo on Saturday, in a field containing Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), showed a step-up in one-day racing, too.

Bogaerts is now confident there's more to come. “He’s still young – he’s 26 – so the better years are ahead of him,” the coach said.

“I think he’s still going to improve [over the next] couple of years. That’s what I predict. Of course, that goes hand in hand with continuing doing the work and continuing having a good work ethic, and having a bit of luck also.”

At San Remo, Pidcock was unfaltering against Pogačar’s attacks. He followed the world champion over the Cipressa, hugged his wheel tightly on the Poggio, mimicking each acceleration, and held on when no-one else could, not even Van der Poel, the Monument’s two-time winner.

Along the finishing straight, again, it was Pogačar who kicked first. Pidcock edged right, came out to round him on the left, and just as the pair drew shoulder to shoulder, the final act in their duel, the line arrived too soon for the Briton. Four centimetres too soon, Pidcock reckoned afterwards.

“It hurts to be so close,” Pidcock said. Was there anything his coach thought he could have done differently? “I think not much, to be honest,” Bogaerts said. “I think he executed really well, rode really maturely, co-operated where he needed to co-operate.

“With a sprint, I think you can say many things. I think he had a strategy, and the other one [Pogačar] was just a little bit faster. I don’t think he could have done much more than he did.”

Some wondered if Pidcock might have attacked on the descent of the Poggio, with around 7km to go. “That wouldn’t make any difference,” Bogaerts said.

“Tadej is a really good bike rider and he has good skills. He prepared this race to the smallest detail. I think that would not be smart [to attack on the descent], and likely would have ended up in a crash, maybe for both of them. That’s knowing that your competitor is well prepared and having respect for your competitor. They went fast downhill – even a few times, it was definitely fast enough.

“[Pidcock] could have won the race,” Bogaerts added. “I think that was definitely possible. I think there’s not much more you can do.”

It was that reality that left the Pinarello Q36.5 rider feeling bittersweet after the line. “I can’t help but be disappointed right now. It was so close to a Monument win, but I need to look at it from a wider perspective,” Pidcock said. “For sure, it must be one of the best days.”

The Briton hopes more good days will now follow, as he plots his season through this week’s Volta a Catalunya, via the Ardennes Classics, and then onto July’s Tour de France.

When he turns up at Milan-San Remo next March, the bookmakers will have him among the favourites – perhaps the favourite if Pogačar does not start. “Tom Pidcock was really strong,” the world champion said in his post-race interview. Don't be surprised if he's even stronger next year.

Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) took victory in the Milano-Torino one-day race on Wednesday after powering away from the front runners on the final climb to the line.

That leading group included former winner Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe), who came in third, just behind runner-up Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), who crossed the line four seconds behind Pidcock. Defending champion Isaac Del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was not riding.

The 174km 1.Pro race, founded in 1876 and known as the oldest cycling race in the world, marked the Briton's second victory of the year following his stage win in the Vuelta a Andalucía last month

“It was a weird day," Pidcock said afterwards. "It felt like the first race of the season almost. With the race rhythm and all the accelerations all day, it felt a bit heavy-legged. Luckily at the end I had a kick there and could hold them off.

“Primož is hard to read," he added. "He’s always in the saddle. I was expecting him to be good there and I was hesitating to attack near the end. Everyone was looking pretty strong but I knew at one point I had to go.

“A win’s a win. They're not easy to come by. Of course it’s nice to get [my] hands in the air," he said.

The race, across the north of Italy, was largely flat bar two ascents of the Superga climb in the last 25km, the second of which hosted the finish. Predictably, the bunch caught the early break on the first climb, and then a 12-rider group – including Pidcock, Roglič et al – attacked over the top.

This splintered further on the final ascent, stretching 4.9km at an average of 9.1%, with Pidcock taking the spoils after attacking in the final kilometre.

Results

Milano-Torino, 178km

1. Tom Pidcock (Gbr) Q36.5 Pro Cycling, 174km in 3:48:45
2. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Nor) Uno-X Mobility, +4s
3. Primož Roglič (Slo) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, +5s
4. Giulio Pellizzari (Ita) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, +11s
5. Cian Uijtdebroeks (Bel) Movistar, +13s
6. Jefferson Alexander Cepeda (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost, +15s
7. Sebastian Berwick (Aus) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA, +18s
8. Lorenzo Fortunato (Ita) XDS-Astana, +25s
9. Alessandro Fancellu (Ita) MBH Bank-CSB Telecom Fort, +36s
10. Michael Storer (Aus) Tudor Pro Cycling, +41s

There were tears in Tom Pidcock’s eyes in the Piazza del Campo at the end of Strade Bianche. Tears of frustration, brought on by an untimely bike mechanical, and also, in his words, a feeling of "sombreness" following another display of Tadej Pogačar dominance.

The Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling rider was one of the few to be with the world champion on the Monte Sante Marie sector with 79km to go of the race, and briefly appeared able to follow the Slovenian, until his chain slipped and the race was gone.

Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) then rode away for his fourth title – his third in a row – while Pidcock finished seventh, having expended his energy chasing back.

“I think you can feel a bit of sombreness here with everyone, with Visma behind me as well,” Pidcock told TNT Sports post-race, moments after exchanging a resigned look and greeting with Matteo Jorgenson of Visma-Lease a Bike.

“With UAE like that, there’s not much you can do. My chain fell off twice on Sante Marie, that really killed my momentum, but I wouldn’t have beaten Tadej anyway.

“I don’t think it changed much apart from taking a bit more out of me. It’s so difficult in the group behind when you know the race has gone. You can always think this is just the race now, but it’s not really how it is, when one guy’s in front.”

It had been a day of UAE Team Emirates-XRG domination. The team set such a pace through the day that no-one could escape the peloton, and orchestrated the race perfectly for Pogačar’s escape on the Sante Marie. In the end, it was the world champion that finished it off, but he was helped to that point by Jan Christen, Florian Vermeersch, Isaac del Toro and others. Once Pogačar was alone, a sense of inevitability descended on the race, despite there still being two hours left.

Did Pidcock ever feel that the gap could be closed? “At one point, yeah,” he said. “But I think that’s a pretty big gap when people are thinking about the final.”

With 17km to go, Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) slipped off the front, followed by Del Toro, and with the move went Pidcock's shot at a podium.

The British rider still remains the last person not called Tadej Pogačar to win Strade Bianche, doing so in 2023. If the Slovenian keeps coming back to the Tuscan Classic, it's hard to see that statistic changing.

It's Paris-Roubaix with hard, hard hills; a Grand Tour gravel epic on steroids; it's an Ardennes Classic with off-road elements. It's Strade Bianche, and once again it looks set to be a thriller.

It's a race with so many tasty ingredients that many feel it ought to join the list of Monuments that sit at the top of the one-day racing tree.

Both men's and women's races run on the same day, Saturday 7 March, and will feature some of cycling's biggest names. This year's races feature a slightly shorter course and, in the case of the men's event, significantly less gravel with the hope of producing a more competitive event – Tadej Pogačar has one the last two editions with long solo attacks.

Here are a few things we're really looking forward to this weekend, at what will be the second big European Classic of the season. We are salivating at the prospect already.

King vs Pretender: Paul Seixas takes on Tadej Pogačar

The ruler must now face the young pretender. Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) will go into the race as favourite, but as many eyes will surely be on French upstart Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CRG), who has been making waves already this season with a series of impressive wins that bely his 19 years.

Neither rider's recent results on paper tell the whole story, for Slovenia's Pogačar has yet to turn a pedal in anger this year and we have little concrete indication of his form. In the case of Seixas – he only took his first pro victory a fortnight ago, and that was at .Pro level – a WorldTour race like Strade Bianche is a step up.

In reality though, we can all be forgiven for presuming when it comes to Tadej Pogačar. The past two seasons have seen him imperious and almost unbeatable in races like this, not to mention he won Strade Bianche in both of those years. As for Seixas, it is his young age and the panache with which he has taken his two wins this season – in particular the one-day Faun Ardèche, where he won solo from long range with a 1:48 gap – that demand we take notice.

Speaking on this week's Watts Occurring podcast with Geraint Thomas, Seixas's DS at Decathlon CMA CGM Luke Rowe had this to say about him:

"He's legit. In the meeting before the race, that's what he said he was going to do. And if you look at the guys he rode off his wheel, if you look at the top 10… they're legit guys. This guy [Seixas] is special… 'F*** me, he's special. He's super professional, lovely bloke – just down to earth. He's still a kid, he's just a jolly kid riding his bike. He doesn't think about the consequences, he just goes and races. He just wants to win everything, smash everyone… he's a special guy."

With a near-190km distance and 11 classified climbs, the Faun Ardèche was not so different to Strade Bianche, minus the strength-sapping white roads, of course. The chances of him riding away from the entire field at Tuscany are slim, but it will be fascinating to watch him go toe to toe with the very best, and on the biggest of stages.

Will Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky extend their streak?

The past four editions of the women's race – the Strade Bianche Donne – have seen the spoils shared between Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) and Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez). These are arguable the two best riders in the women's peloton and Strade Bianche offers up the perfect platform where either of these riders, with their own particular abilities, can win. Since Kopecky's first win in 2022, they've taken it in turns, with Vollering the current defending champion.

Both women return again, with Dutchwoman Vollering looking in great form following a run of great results at the Setmana Valenciana – where she took two stages and the overall win; and Omloop Nieuwsblad – which she won. Kopecky, on the other hand, suffered a mechanical at Omloop, which is her one race so far this season, and was unable to capitalise on what she said were good feelings.

Vollering and Kopecky are unlikely to have things all their own way of course – see below for some of the other riders who have the ability to challenge for the win at Strade Bianche Donne.

Shorter, smoother, more open, but still brutal

The organiser of Strade Bianche, RCS, has shortened the course for both men and women, and taken gravel sectors out, with the aim of making the race more open. For the men, the distance is reduced from from 215 to 205km, and, in the men's race, removed two-and-a-half sectors of sterrati, bringing the amount of gravel in the event down by 18km. There is less removed in the women's race on both counts, with the distance reduced by just three kilometres to 133km. Two sectors of sterrati have also been removed in the early stages, making for a 16km reduction.

It feels like this was done with half an eye on Pogačar more than anything else, perhaps to rein in those long-range attacks that have become his trademark and can have the effect of nullifying a race after little more than the halfway mark, in extreme cases. However, the changes have been made in the first half, with the tough and hilly finale left in.

Challengers to the throne

Strade Bianche is about far more than just Tadej Pogacar and Paul Seixas, or Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky. In the men's event, Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) will be taking the start. The Brit won the race in 2023 and has been among the best of the rest behind Pogačar in the two races since – last year, in fact, he was second. Pidcock loves this race and will be lining up with nothing on his mind but winning.

The provisional startlist also features Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), he of the impressive breakaways at last year's Tour de France; Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek), who pushed Pogacar hard in another hilly Classic – Il Lombardia – last year; and Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), who will be looking forward to turning the tables on a run of recent bad luck.

In the women's race, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) heads up the challenge from riders whose surname is not Vollering or Kopecky. She has come second here three times (the last time being 2018) but the 2024 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift winner is still more than capable of winning the race. A recent second at Omloop suggests she's in great form.

Elsewhere Pauline Ferrand-Prevot (Visma-Lease a Bike) will make her season debut here. Her third place here last year – not to mention the fact she is the reigning Tour de France Femmes champ – suggests she is well capable of winning on the right day. Finally, Shirin van Anrooij will head up the Lidl-Trek squad. The young Dutch rider is yet to amass many wins but has a previous fifth place here (2024).

Tom Pidcock's coach Kurt Bogaerts has said that the presence of Tadej Pogačar is something to be accepted and relished as a challenge, rather than something to complain about.

The Pinarello-Q36.5 head of performance was speaking to Dutch outlet Wielerflits about the Briton's approach to this weekend's Strade Bianche – a race that he won back in 2023 but which UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider Pogačar has made his own for the past two seasons.

"You're going to face him in all the big races, right?" Bogaerts said of the Slovenian. "So you have to deal with that. You have to try to be really good yourself and then see how you can battle him. I think something is definitely possible. If we aim for a good result, the rest will follow. We shouldn't complain. It's only good for the sport that Pogačar is interested in a wide range of races. Honestly, I like that."

He was responding to a comment suggesting it did not matter how well prepared Pidcock was, he would still have to face the defending champion.

Bogaerts added: "Last year, Tom went first. Not necessarily with the intention of anticipating, but mainly to play to his own strengths. Tom has a good sense of his capabilities, and then it's a matter of waiting to see how the opposition reacts. We're going to try to do that again. We're not averse to taking action ourselves, but we might end up in a scenario we have to follow."

He said Pidcock was "not losing any sleep" over a disappointing 48th place finish at Omloop Nieuwsblad, where he suffered with the cold after what Bogaerts said were poor clothing choices, and a crash.

"But he still managed to get back to the front from behind the last group. I don't really understand how he managed that… You can't do that if you're not in top form, I think," he said.

He called Strade Bianche "one of the races that [Pidcock] gets out of bed for" and is very passionate about. The Yorkshire rider has already done a recon ride himself, and the whole team is set to do another this week.

Things hadn't really "fallen into place" for Pidcock so far this year, said Bogaerts, with the issues at Omloop and a shortened Vuelta Murcia, for example. But his performance at the Ruta del Sol, where he won a stage, showed he was on good form.

Strade Bianche takes place this Saturday 7 March – if you want to follow the action, check out our streaming guide here.

Tom Pidcock kicked off his Spring Classics campaign at Opening Weekend’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in Gent, Belgium – a 207.2km loop that takes in many of the familiar cobbles and bergs of the Flemish Ardennes. He came into the race in fine form, having won the fifth and final stage of the Vuelta a Andalucía, but with Mathieu van der Poel, Kasper Asgreen, and Florian Vermeersch also on the start line, and with notably cold and damp conditions, a good result would always prove tough.

The Briton would eventually finish in a disappointing 48th position after battling the cold and crashes, ultimately losing contact with the peloton with 60km to go.

In terms of equipment, Pidcock opted for a fairly standard setup, save for the addition of a 1x drivetrain – a setup that proved immensely popular across all the teams. His size 465 Pinarello Dogma F frame might be one of the smaller sizes in the Italian bike maker’s range, but with a stack and reach of 525.2- and 372.2mm (a stack-to-reach ratio of 1.41), it allows for a very aggressive, aerodynamic position.

The Yorkshireman’s Most Talon UltraFast integrated handlebar was paired with a 120mm stem, which was among the shortest at the race, but not uncommon. The frame is painted in a stunning matte treatment with gold wordmark logos providing a vivid contrast to the satin-navy hue. It’s one classy-looking machine.

While the frame can accommodate tyre widths of up to 32mm, Pidcock - like much of the peloton - opted for 30mm rubber. In this case, a pair of Vittoria Corsa Pro wrapped around Zipp 303 SW wheels, complete with integrated AXS wheel sensor. Here, the gold Zipp decals and tan walls add an extra layer of visual drama and help create a cohesive package.

Component-wise, the Dogma F is outfitted with SRAM Red AXS, featuring a single 54T chainring that drives a 10-36T cassette via 165mm cranks. Despite the X-Sync narrow/wide tooth profile of the ring, a Wolf Tooth chainkeeper was fitted to ensure the chain stayed put over the choppy terrain and cobbled sections. The finishing kit comes compliments of the Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling's sponsors – so there’s the proven Tacx Deva bottle cages, a Prologo Nago R4 PAS 137mm saddle, and Shimano Dura-Ace PD-R9100 pedals.

Even in Classics trim, where weight is not a priority, the Dogma F was the lightest bike we weighed at Opening Weekend at 7.18kg with pedals.

Specs

• Frameset: TorayCa M40X, TiCR
• Fork: eTICR Onda Fork with ForkFlap
• Cockpit: Most Talon Ultra Fast integrated cockpit
• Seatpost: Pinarello Aero
• Groupset: SRAM Red AXS 54T, 10-36T
• Wheelset: Zipp 303 SW
• Tyres: Vittoria Corsa Pro 30mm
• Saddle: Prologo Nago R4 PAS

Saturday 28 February

Men’s
Distance: 207.2km
Start: 10:05 Finish: 14:50 (GMT)

Women’s
Distance: 137.2km
Start: 12:35 Finish: 16:20 (GMT)

Omloop Nieuwsblad is the start of the Classics, one part of Opening Weekend. It heralds the full-on racing season, and the cobbled one-day events which are to come.

The race forms part of a double-header across the weekend, with Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne following on the Sunday for the men, and Omloop van het Hageland for the women.

This is the 81st edition of the men's race, and the 21st of the women's, so it has some serious pedigree. Here's everything you need to know for the 2026 race.

Five things to watch out for

1. A sprinter’s race?

The men’s edition of Omloop last year finished in a sprint for the first time since 2021; it is the kind of race which seems to either have a solo winner or quite a large bunch in Ninove. With less of the relentless climbing that other Classics have, it could be a race which favours a rider like Biniam Girmay or Jasper Philipsen.

2. Dutch dominance

Five of the last seven women’s races have been won by the Netherlands; no particular surprise when you think of the Dutch dominance of women’s racing. If there’s a solo attack this year, you’d pin your hopes on Demi Vollering, while if it’s a sprint, Lorena Wiebes seems unbeatable. The record might well be extended.

3. British hopes

The list of top competitors for Omloop is peppered with Union Flags. Cat Ferguson, two-time victor this season already, is a serious contender in a selective sprint, while Tom Pidcock will be looking to beat his previous best result of fifth. That isn’t it though, with Anna Henderson, Matthew Brennan and Fred Wright all down to race.

4. Kuurne time

The younger sibling of Opening Weekend is Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, which takes place on the Sunday. It’sa 1.Pro race, so not all the big stars will turn out, but those that do will fight hard. It is the ultimate opportunity for someone to make up for a disappointing Saturday, if they have the legs. For the women, Omloop van het Hageland provides the same opportunity.

5. Classics narrative

Omloop is just five weeks out from the peak of the Classics season at the Tour of Flanders, followed a week later by Paris-Roubaix, and it might be Opening Weekend, but things that happen here have an impact throughout the rest of the season. If Mathieu van der Poel or Vollering win, then they will increase their favourite status. If there are surprise performances from unheralded riders, then they will be marked for the next few races. Anything could happen, and this is the start.

Focus on Muur van Gerrardsbergen

Omloop Nieuwsblad effectively runs as a mini-Tour of Flanders, but doesn’t include the Koppenberg, Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg triple. Instead, it uses the old Flanders one-two finish of the Muur van Gerrardsbergen followed by the Bosberg.

The race will be decided on these cobbled climbs, even if there is a lone attacker at this point. De Muur is an iconic climb, and might only be 6.8% over 910 metres, but always has a say in Omloop. Whoever is first to the chapel at the top might just win the race.

How to watch

How to watch

It is on TNT Sports in the UK and Ireland, accessible via a TV package or a Discovery+ subscription. In the US, it's on FloBikes. Check out our full how to watch guide for more.

Last year's podium

Last year’s podium

Men

1. Søren Wærenskjold (Nor) Uno-X Mobility
2. Paul Magnier (Fra) Soudal Quick-Step
3. Jasper Philipsen (Bel) Alpecin-Decuninck

Women

1. Lotte Claes (Bel) Lotto Intermarché
2. Aurela Nerlo (Pol) Winspace Orange Seal
3. Demi Vollering (Ned) SD Worx-Protime

Riders to watch

Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling) ****

The double-Olympic mountain bike champion has never finished higher than fifth at Omloop, but will be a well-marked rider given his ability to attack from the front. If he gets a clear run from the Muur, he will be hard to drag back.

Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) *****

Somehow, Vollering has never won Omloop. Last year, she was the best of the rest as a surprise breakaway made it to the finish. She will surely be attempting to make up for missed opportunities. Expect her to try and attack from far out and solo away.

Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) *****

The Dutch sprinter’s record is verging on outrageous. Wiebes essentially hasn’t lost a bunch sprint since 2024, and if it does come down to a large group in Ninove, betting against her would be like betting against it raining in the UK at the moment. Her SD Worx team will try and keep the race together.

Biniam Girmay (NSN Pro Cycling) ***

Four years on from his watershed Gent-Wevelgem victory, Girmay is back in winning form, and he always seemed suited to the tough racing of the Classics. In a new team, NSN will be all-in to back their Eritrean superstar. Expect Lewis Askey to do a lot of work for him.

Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) ****

The Belgian is no longer world champion, but that will not make her any less marked. Free from targeting GC at stage races, Kopecky is free to do what she is best at, winning one-day races. Expect fireworks.

Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) *****

Making an appearance at Omloop for the first time is one of the best Classics riders of all time, Mathieu van der Poel. He is yet to race this season, but don't expect that to hold him back – he will be the hot favourite.

Startlist

Men's

*denotes unconfirmed team

Alpecin-Premier Tech
Edward Planckaert
Florian Sénéchal
Jasper Philipsen
Kaden Groves
Lennert Belmans
Mathieu van der Poel
Tobias Bayer

Bahrain Victorious
Alec Segaert
Attila Valter
Kamil Gradek
Matej Mohorič
Pau Miquel
Robert Stannard
Vlad Van Mechelen

Burgos Burpellet BH
Alexandre Mayer
César Macias
Clément Alléno
Daniel Cavia
Georgios Bouglas
Josh Burnett
Vojtěch Kmínek

Cofidis
Alex Kirsch
Alexis Renard
Dylan Teuns
Hugo Page
Jenthe Biermans
Piet Allegaert
Stanisław Aniołkowski

Decathlon CMA CGM
Oliver Naesen
Oscar Chamberlain
Rasmus Søjberg Pedersen
Sander De Pestel
Stan Dewulf
Stefan Bissegger
Tobias Lund Andresen

EF Education-EasyPost
Colby Simmons
Kasper Asgreen
Luke Lamperti
Marijn van den Berg
Mikkel Frølich Honoré
Noah Hobbs
Vincenzo Albanese

Flanders Baloise
Dylan Vandenstorme
Michiel Lambrecht
Milan Lanhove
Siebe Deweirdt
Victor Vercouillie
Vincent Van Hemelen
Ward Vanhoof

Groupama-FDJ United*
Axel Huens
Bastien Tronchon
Clément Russo
Cyril Barthe
Johan Jacobs
Thibaud Gruel
Valentin Madouas

Ineos Grenadiers
Artem Shmidt
Ben Swift
Ben Turner
Kim Heiduk
Magnus Sheffield
Michał Kwiatkowski
Samuel Watson

Jayco Alula
Amaury Capiot
Anders Foldager
Dries De Bondt
Dries De Pooter
Jelte Krijnsen
Kelland O'Brien
Robert Donaldson

Lidl-Trek
Albert Withen Philipsen
Edward Theuns
Mathias Vacek
Otto Vergaerde
Søren Kragh Andersen
Tim Torn Teutenberg
Toms Skujiņš

Lotto Intermarché
Arnaud De Lie
Cédric Beullens
Jenno Berckmoes
Luca Van Boven
Roel van Sintmaartensdijk
Sébastien Grignard
Vito Braet

Movistar
Carlos Canal
Filip Maciejuk
Iván García Cortina
Jon Barrenetxea
Manlio Moro
Orluis Aular
Roger Adrià

NSN Cycling
Biniam Girmay
Guillaume Boivin
Lewis Askey
Matis Louvel
Riley Sheehan
Ryan Mullen
Tom Van Asbroeck

Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling*
Aimé De Gendt
Brent Van Moer
Fred Wright
Frederik Frison
Kamil Małecki
Tom Pidcock
Xandro Meurisse

Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe
Arne Marit
Gianni Vermeersch
Jarrad Drizners
Jordi Meeus
Laurence Pithie
Mick van Dijke
Tim van Dijke

Soudal Quick-Step
Casper Pedersen
Dries van Gestel
Dylan van Baarle
Jasper Stuyven
Paul Magnier
Pepijn Reinderink
Yves Lampaert

Picnic PostNL
Frank van den Broek
Henri-François Renard-Haquin
John Degenkolb
Julius van den Berg
Sean Flynn
Timo de Jong
Timo Roosen

Visma-Lease a Bike
Axel Zingle
Christophe Laporte
Edoardo Affini
Matthew Brennan
Per Strand Hagenes
Pietro Mattio
Timo Kielich

TotalEnergies
Alexys Brunel
Anthony Turgis
Baptiste Vadic
Samuel Leroux
Sandy Dujardin
Thomas Bonnet
Thomas Gachignard

Tudor Pro Cycling*
Aivaras Mikutis
Luca Mozzato
Marco Haller
Matteo Trentin
Petr Kelemen
Rick Pluimers
Stefan Küng

UAE Team Emirates-XRG
Florian Vermeersch
Juan Sebastián Molano
Julius Johansen
Nils Politt
Rui Oliveira
Rune Herregodts
Tim Wellens

Unibet Rose Rockets
Joren Bloem
Karsten Larsen Feldmann
Lukáš Kubiš
Martijn Rasenberg
Matyáš Kopecký
Niklas Larsen
Tomáš Kopecký

Uno-X Mobility*
Carl-Frederik Bévort
Erik Nordsæter Resell
Jonas Abrahamsen
Markus Hoelgaard
Rasmus Tiller
Søren Wærenskjold
Sven Erik Bystrøm

XDS Astana*
Aaron Gate
Alberto Bettiol
Alessandro Romele
Arjen Livyns
Davide Ballerini
Lev Gonov
Mike Teunissen

Women's

*denotes unconfirmed team

AG Insurance - Soudal Team
Alana Castrique
Gladys Verhulst-Wild
Ilse Pluimers
Letizia Borghesi
Marthe Goossens
Shari Bossuyt

Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto
Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka
Anastasiya Kolesava
Chiara Consonni
Kasia Niewiadoma
Tiffany Cromwell
Zoe Bäckstedt

Citymesh Customm Pro Cycling Team*
Britt De Grave
Britt Knaven
Cleo Kiekens
Eline van Rooijen
Femke Van Goethem
Yonna van Dam

Cofidis
Kristýna Burlová
Malwina Mul
Marion Borras
Martina Alzini
Valentine Fortin
Victoire Berteau

EF Education-Oatly
Alexandra Volstad
Alexis Magner
Babette van der Wolf
Cédrine Kerbaol
Mirre Knaven
Nina Berton

FDJ United-SUEZ*
Demi Vollering
Elise Chabbey
Eva van Agt
Franziska Koch
Juliette Berthet
Vittoria Guazzini

Fenix-Premier Tech
Christina Schweinberger
Evy Kuijpers
Flora Perkins
Lotte Claes
Marthe Truyen
Millie Couzens

Human Powered Health
Daria Pikulik
Kathrin Schweinberger
Lily Williams
Maggie Coles-Lyster
Marta Jaskulska
Thalita de Jong

Laboral Kutxa Fundación Euskadi
Arianna Fidanza
Idoia Eraso
Irati Aranguren
Marjolein van 't Geloof
Naia Amondarain
Sara Fiorin

Lidl-Trek
Anna Henderson
Elisa Balsamo
Fleur Moors
Loes Adegeest
Margot Vanpachtenbeke
Shirin van Anrooij

Liv AlUla Jayco
Caroline Andersson
Jeanne Korevaar
Letizia Paternoster
Noa Jansen
Quinty Ton
Ruby Roseman-Gannon

Lotto Intermarché Ladies
Anna van Wersch
Katrijn De Clercq
Lani Wittervrongel
Lea Lin Teutenberg
Linda Riedmann
Marieke Meert

Ma Petite Entreprise*
Alison Avoine
Clémence Latimier
Ilona Rouat
Margot Marasco
Noémie Abgrall

Mayenne Monbana My Pie*
Allison Mrugal
Constance Valentin
Fiona Mangan
Justine Gegu
Kiara Lylyk
Natalie Quinn

Minimax Cycling Team*
Camilla Rånes Bye
Clara Lundmark
Émilie Fortin
Gwen Nothum
Katja Verkerk
Ursula Linden

Movistar
Arlenis Sierra
Aude Biannic
Carys Lloyd
Cat Ferguson
Liane Lippert
Sheyla Gutiérrez

Picnic PostNL
Audrey De Keersmaeker
Daniela Hezinová
Josie Nelson
Lucie Fityus
Mara Roldan
Mia Griffin

SD Worx-Protime
Anna van der Breggen
Elena Cecchini
Femke Markus
Lorena Wiebes
Lotte Kopecky
Mischa Bredewold

St Michel-Preference Home Auber93
Alicia Gonzalez
Alison Jackson
Caroline Wreszin
Clémence Chéreau
Elyne Roussel
India Grangier

UAE Team ADQ
Brodie Chapman
Eleonora Camilla Gasparrini
Elynor Bäckstedt
Karlijn Swinkels
Lara Gillespie
Megan Jastrab

Uno-X Mobility*
Alessia Vigilia
Ingvild Gåskjenn
Laura Tomasi
Linda Zanetti
Susanne Andersen
Teuntje Beekhuis

Visma-Lease a Bike*
Daniek Hengeveld
Imogen Wolff
Katharina Sadnik
Nienke Veenhoven
Rosita Reijnhout

VolkerWessels Cycling*
Amber van der Hulst
Anne Knijnenburg
Esmée Peperkamp
Maud Rijnbeek
Quinty Schoens
Sophie von Berswordt

This weekend signified the end of the first round of early-season stage races, with Opening Weekend and the Classics arriving in just a few day's time. Last week we saw the UAE Tour, the Volta ao Algarve and the Vuelta a Andalucía/Ruta del Sol, featuring a variety of the protagonists we're expecting to see in this summer's men's Grand Tours.

It's too early to use these February races as a barometer for July or even May, but they're a handy indicator as to who's wintered well and who has a little further to go, and more. We take a look.

Isaac Del Toro 2-1 Remco Evenpoel

Perhaps the most impressive overall performance of the past week has come from young Mexican Isaac del Toro. The UAE Tour was the first race of the season for the 20-year-old UAE Team Emirates-XRG, and one which he began in the shadow of Belgian star Remco Evenepoel.

All eyes were on the Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe rider, as one of the few big stars to openly declare Tadej Pogačar-beating intentions.

The first two stages saw the pair take one apiece, but on the stage three summit finish to Jebel Mobrah, Evenepoel began to fade, losing two minutes and his GC lead to winner Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious) and declaring afterwards: "I don't know what happened." Del Toro, however stayed strong and close to the race lead.

After two days of GC stalemate the Mexican added another stage and took the GC lead at Jebel Hafeet summit finish, while Evenepoel continued to languish among the also-rans, ultimately finishing 10th on GC.

The final report: a 'could do better' for Evenepoel; a gold star for Del Toro.

Tom Pidcock opens his account

With a win in the final stage of the Vuelta a Andalucía, Tom Pidcock's tally for the year is off and running.

After a particularly successful round of results in last season's early stage races, the 26-year-old will be relieved to have been able to notch up a result here again.

“I think it’s great to get the pressure off and get the hands in the air early in the season in the first block of races," he said afterwards. "That’s definitely what we were working towards.”

It doesn't quite live up to last year's four wins in early stage races, but that's not the point. While he was second in Strade Bianche last year, Pidcock went the whole season without a WorldTour win while he settled into his new Q36.5 team, and he will be looking to correct that this year.

Juan Ayuso breaks the ice

Over at the Volta ao Algarve, Juan Ayuso was opening his account too, which will have gone down well with his new Lidl-Trek, who prised him from UAE Team Emirates-XRG last year mid-contract. Like Pidcock, Ayuso won the final stage, but the Spaniard enjoyed the added bonus of that victory also netting him the overall.

Like most of his rivals at the Volta al Algarve, who included old team-mate Joāo Almeida, Oscar Onley (Ineos Grenadiers) and Matthew Riccitello (Decathlon CMA CGM), Ayuso is focused on the summer Grand Tours (the Tour de France in the Spaniard's case). But this first ever win at Lidl-Trek is a great icebreaker and will alleviate some of the pressure going forward to the bigger race.

Away from the politics, Ineos Grenadiers looking positive

Politics and rash outbursts by their owner Jim Ratcliffe aside, Ineos Grenadiers are enjoying a start to the season that belongs right up there with some of their best years.

A time trial victory by an impressive-looking Filippo Ganna at the Volta ao Algarve brought the team's win tally to seven so far this year, all taken by a healthy variety of riders, including 20-year-old AJ August at the Vuelta Valenciana and new Aussie signing Sam Welsford in the Tour Down Under.

Add to that new signing Oscar Onley's second-place right behind Ayuso on the final stage at Algarve, and you have a team that is looking in great shape for the months to come – and potentially able once again to challenge for the podium at the Tour de France.

Paul Seixas seizes the day

The name Paul Seixas will be familiar to many already, despite his mere 19 years and the fact that until last week he was yet to win a professional race. As the winner of last year's Tour de l'Avenir though, the Decathlon CMA CGM rider already had plenty to show off.

His win on the cat-one climb to Foia at the Volta ao Algarve though, where he outsprinted Ayuso no less, was a watershed career moment for the Frenchman though, and he went on to finish an impressive second on the GC and take the youth classification. It was, said Seixas, "an almost perfect start to the season". These are results that bode well for Seixas's upcoming assault on hilly Classics, including Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

It took just seven race days for Tom Pidcock to open his 2026 victory account, as he won the final stage of the Vuelta a Andalucía on Sunday.

The 26-year-old, now in his second season with Pinarello Q36.5, attacked on a short, category-three climb inside 6km to go on stage five. The move initially drew Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ United), who Pidcock then dropped with a second kick, before descending solo to the finish line in Lucena.

The race was won overall by Movistar’s Iván Romeo. Pidcock’s victory helped him rise from sixth to third in the general classification, meaning he has now finished on the podium in all three events he has competed in this year.

On his stage win, Pidcock said afterwards: “I think it’s great to get the pressure off and get the hands in the air early in the season in the first block of races. That’s definitely what we were working towards.”

Pidcock opened his season at the two-day Vuelta a la Región de Murcia last week, only racing one stage before the race was cancelled due to high winds. He then placed second to UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s Tim Wellens at the Clásica Jaén, a one-day race with gravel sectors.

“The shape was great in Murcia and Jaén, but the weather, and also UAE, got the better of us in those races,” he said.

“The frustration was coming out a little bit [at the Vuelta a Andalucía] after we lost the GC basically on stage two. Even though the legs are so good, it’s not easy always to show it. I think also the parcours was not actually as hard as perhaps we thought. We didn’t look into it well enough, which is an oversight on our part.”

The Olympic mountain bike champion began the year in Chile, where he and six other Pinarello Q36.5 riders travelled for a pre-season altitude camp.

“We’ve trained super hard this winter. We made a big commitment as well as a team, both financially and taking a, not a risk, but trying something new to go to Chile and train there,” he said.

“It’s always difficult when you come from training so hard to get into the racing and be able to put it all on the line. But it’s great for us as a team that we can get a victory under our belt already.”

Pidcock is next expected to compete at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on 28 February, before returning to Strade Bianche on 7 March. He finished runner-up to Tadej Pogačar in the Italian Classic last spring.

This weekend's racing was decimated by the weather, with a stage of the Setmana Valenciana stage race cancelled and the two-day Vuelta a la Región de Murcia reduced to a quarter of that.

Extreme weather protocols were put in place in both races in the face of high-speed wind conditions that saw riders blown off the road and made continuing too hazardous.

The races were run off in the neighbouring regions of eastern Spain, where weather warnings and forecasts of 80kph (50mph) wind speeds had been issued, meaning some sort of disruption was always on the cards.

However, the organisers of the Vuelta Murcia in particular probably did not bank on their race being decimated in the way it was. On stage one after less than 10km of racing it became obvious that conditions were simply not safe to continue, and thus the riders were relocated in buses to Fortuna, further along the planned route, where the race restarted. This left just 83km – around half of the original planned 178.5km of the race.

This didn't stop riders taking what remained by the scruff of the neck though, with a break quickly forming and a strong Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) attacking with, and then dropping, team-mate Julius Johansen, and Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) attacking from the chase group to take third.

These GC standings remained exactly as they were at the end of the following (and final) stage, which was neutralised after just 10km of racing and no GC given.

The women's Setmana Ciclista Volta Feminina de la Communitat Valenciana was less badly hit, with Saturday's third stage of four cancelled altogether but the only stage affected. The three remaining stages provided enough substance for double stage and overall winner Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) to demonstrate her early season form, while Cat Ferguson (Movistar, winner of stage two and seventh on stage four) and Maeva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ, 2nd on GC and stage one and 3rd stage four) also showed well.

Right on cue, the weather in eastern Spain has returned this week to something resembling normality – warm with a breeze that will slowly die down over the next few days.

However, with a greater focus on rider safety and extreme weather protocols forming a significant part of that – along with climate change effects that seem to be making themselves heard ever louder – this weekend is unlikely to be the last time we see races shortened and cancelled this season. Stage one of the men's UAE Tour, on Monday, was also shortened due to the wind.

After a tumultuous relationship with the Tour de France, Tom Pidcock has said he “wasn’t exactly excited” to hear his team, Pinarello-Q36.5, will be at the race this year, but he will go with the aim of enjoying himself.

The 26-year-old won a stage on Alpe d’Huez on his Tour debut in 2022, but turned to target the general classification with Ineos Grenadiers in the subsequent two years, which he “didn’t really enjoy”, he said at the end of 2024.

Now, in an interview with The Observer, Pidcock made clear he needs to “refind that excitement for the Tour”.

“There’s such high pressure and expectations from external people, but also internally, from teams. In our team, I think it will be different,” he said.

“My main goal is to go there and have fun and enjoy it and I think that will bring success. Obviously, we’re going to have to train our balls off.”

Last season, his first season with Q36.5, the Brit put in a career-best Grand Tour performance when he finished third at the Vuelta a España. His best result at the Tour came in 2023, when he finished 13th.

“When you’re competing just to stay in the top 10, I struggle to find the motivation to do that and have to ­battle [with] that for three weeks. It’s just draining,” he told The Observer.

“I think if we can go and enjoy the stress of the Tour, then that will help change my mindset back to how it should be.

“[The Tour] is the biggest race in the world. It’s the race that inspired me when I was young. It’s inspiring probably millions of other kids, but to race, it’s not the most enjoyable. Hopefully we can change that.”

Pidcock missed the Tour last season due to the fact Q36.5 did not receive an invite. The team qualified their place for the 2026 edition as one of the top-two-ranked ProTeams, a status that gives them automatic invites to all three Grand Tours.

“I think it’s a massive opportunity,” Pidcock said in a team press release last month. “I’ve had ups and downs in the Tour de France the last years, so it’s nice now, with this new team, to earn our own place there. It’s the biggest stage we have to race on. With that comes so much baggage but I think in this team they help me carry it all."

The Olympic mountain bike champion opens his road season on Friday at the two-stage Vuelta a la Región de Murcia. He will then race a full Classics campaign, including Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, before heading to Barcelona for the start of the Tour on 4 July.

Tom Pidcock has called the Tour de France a "massive opportunity" and an "honour" for Pinarello-Q36.5, after the ProTeam were announced as one of the 23 squads taking part in the Grand Tour this summer.

The 26-year-old will return to the Tour this summer after not racing it in 2025 after his move to Q36.5, a second-division team, from WorldTour outfit Ineos Grenadiers. However, the Swiss squad took enough points, mostly through Pidcock, to mean that they are automatically invited to all WorldTour events in 2026, including the Tour.

As a result, he will be – barring misfortune – on the start line in Barcelona in July, back at the race which brought him one of the peaks of his career, his win on Alpe d'Huez at the 2022 race. The Tour returns to the iconic mountain for two stages this year.

"The Tour de France is the biggest race in the world, the biggest bike race in the world," Pidcock said in a team statement. "So yeah, to be able to go there and to try and perform the best you can is an honour. So I think that’s an exciting task for us as a team, to be there in the best shape possible. I think it’s really special that we’re going to the Tour de France this year.

"We have earned our place, the team, through our performances last year, that’s given us the right to go there and no one can take that away from us. So I think it’s a massive opportunity. I’ve had ups and downs in the Tour de France the last years, so it’s nice now, with this new team, to earn our own place there. It’s the biggest stage we have to race on. With that comes so much baggage but I think in this team they help me carry it all."

It will be Pidcock's fourth Tour; as well as his stage win in 2022, he has spent time in the white jersey and the top 10 overall. On his last appearance, in 2024, he finished second on the gravel stage to Troyes, but also hit the headlines as Ineos' then director of racing Steve Cummings was kept away from the race. Since moving to Q36.5, Pidcock has won five times, and finished third overall at the Vuelta a España last summer.

"I think personally, my biggest objective is to go there, enjoy the suffering, enjoy the intensity of the race, the media with the racing," he said. "I think if we can enjoy it and enjoy the suffering as a team, then the results will come from that. I think we’re a team that’s growing, so to have the opportunity to go and race the Tour is just one step along the way. Of course, where we want to go is to be at the Tour de France every year, racing every year for wins. So yeah, it’s another step on the ladder of where we want to get to, I guess."

Pidcock's season will begin next week at the Vuelta a Murcia before he targets the Classics. Last month, he travelled to Chile for some altitude training in a less popular location.

Currently training in Chile with his Pinarello-Q36.5 team, Tom Pidcock has been turning in some impressive rides over the past two weeks, although none more so than yesterday's 200.2km epic.

Joined by new team-mate Fred Wright, as well as Fabio Christen, Xandro Meurisse and Quinten Hermans, the Yorkshire rider rode west out of the mountains to the plains north of capital Santiago, before turning back for a return journey that comprised more than 80km of almost unbroken climbing to their hotel at 2,750m of altitude.

By the time they had got back, the riders had amassed Queen-stage levels of vertical ascent – 4,003m – and seven hours in the saddle, all at 28.5kph (17.4mph).

Pidcock gave little away beyond the bare stats, leaving the name as Strava's default 'Morning Ride' and opting not to post any comments. He did, however, rack up several top-10 awards and a few PRs too. Five of the latter were bagged on the final couple of hikes to the hotel, suggesting that he was, at least, trying pretty hard at this point.

Pidcock begins his season with a trio of smaller Spanish races in mid-February, including the hilly, five-day Ruta del Sol in Spain. Chile, it seems, is likely to have prepared him well.

His team has been talking in the Belgian press about the 25-day camp, noting the unique attractions of this unusual and far-flung training destination; while it is ostensibly an altitude camp, it could also be deemed an acclimatisation camp for the searing heat – 36°C in the valley where they do their intervals, according to Pidcock's team-mate Meurisse.

"When you're sheltered from the wind on the bike, it feels like an oven," the Belgian told Het Laatse Nieuws. "Sweating is the order of the day." Added to that is a UV Index of 14, meaning the riders have to reapply SPF50 several times a day in order to avoid being sunburned.

Despite the discomfort and the inconvenience the high temperatures bring, the advantages of training in Chile as opposed to the more traditional Mount Teide in Tenerife where it's 10 degrees cooler, or Spain's Sierra Nevada where there is still snow around, is not lost on the team.

"These days, every professional cyclist does heat training as an extra stimulus to expose their body to extreme conditions," team rider Hermans pointed out to HLN. "They cycle indoors in warm clothing on rollers or go to the sauna, but here you simply do those heat sessions outside on the bike in shorts and sleeves."

Tom Pidcock is to begins his season in Spain at the Vuelta a Murcia next month, as part of a 12-race spring programme.

The 26-year-old, in his second season at Pinarello Q36.5, is to take part in three races in Spain in February before Omloop Nieuwsblad on Opening Weekend.

He will then switch to Italy for Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo before riding the Volta a Catalunya in March. His spring will conclude with the hilly Classics, ending at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the "primary objective".

Pinarello Q36.5 are eligible for invites to all WorldTour races this year, mainly thanks to points earned by Pidcock in 2025, and so do not have to wait to be given wildcard invites by race organisers. It is expected that the team, and Pidcock, will line up at the Tour de France in July, but this is yet to be confirmed. He finished third at the Vuelta a España last year, his best ever Grand Tour result.

"My schedule stays quite similar to previous years," Pidcock said in a press release. "But adding in some new races to keep things fresh. But also to give time to training blocks and periodisation to make sure I am ready for the races that matter most."

Last year, Pidcock rode the AlUla Tour and the Ruta del Sol ahead of Omloop, and then rode Tirreno-Adriatico between Strade and San Remo.

In 2026, the Yorkshireman will ride Murcia, which becomes a two-stage race for the first time since 2020, before the one-day race Clásica Jaén. Jaén, a similar race to Strade with gravel sectors, is only in its fifth year, but has boasted Tadej Pogačar and Michał Kwiatkowski as winners in the past; Pidcock has never raced it.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider will then taken on the Ruta del Dol for the second year in a row. He won stage two there last year, and finished third overall. February concludes at Omloop, where Pidcock's best result is fifth in five attempts.

March begins at Strade Bianche, where Pidcock won in 2023 and finished second behind Pogačar last year, before Milan-Turin and then Milan-San Remo. It will be a debut at the former, and the fifth time at the latter, where he has a best result of 11th.

It is then back to stage racing at the Volta a Catalunya, which Pidcock hasn't raced before, where he will face Jonas Vingegaard and João Almeida, the two main contenders for the Giro d'Italia.

However, it is not more stage racing for Pidcock next, but hilly one-day Classics. His schedule sees him head to Brabantse Pijl, where he won in 2021, and then the Amstel Gold Race, where he won in 2024. He will then tackle La Flèche Wallone, where he finished third last year, before Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a race he has finished second in before.

Tom Pidcock's spring schedule

13-14 February: Vuelta Ciclista a la Región de Murcia
16 February: Clásica Jaén
18-22 February: Vuelta a Andalucia Ruta Ciclista Del Sol
28 February: Omloop Nieuwsblad
7 March: Strade Bianche
18 March: Milan-Turin
21 March: Milan-San Remo
23-29 March: Volta Ciclista a Catalunya
17 April: Brabantse Pijl
19 April: Amstel Gold Race
22 April: La Flèche Wallonne
26 April: Liège-Bastogne-Liège

Forget Tenerife and Mallorca, Tom Pidcock and his Pinarello-Q36.5 teammates are heading to South America for their pre-season altitude training camp this year.

Seven of the team’s riders, including Brits Pidcock, Fred Wright and Tom Gloag, will travel to Chile at the end of this week ahead of the 2026 road campaign.

In an interview with Belgian outlet Sporza, Pinarello-Q36.5 sports director Kurt Bogaerts explained the country was a “well-considered choice” by the team.

“It all has to do with the climate,” Bogaerts, Pidcock’s long-term coach, said. “The weather is beautiful there and it's a new environment."

January is typically sunny and dry in the mountains of northern Chile, where the team will be based for nearly a month, with temperatures between 20-30°C.

Teams tend to visit European locations for their pre-season camps; Spain and the Canary Islands are popular choices.

Asked why Pinarello-Q36.5 have opted to go further afield, Bogaerts said: "In the Sierra Nevada [southern Spain], for example, there was a huge amount of snow this winter. You have to drive down to the valley every day, and that's not exactly fun either."

He added that Tenerife was also ruled out because “most riders have already seen Mount Teide from the inside and out. You have to cycle up that same climb every time, which makes it mentally tough."

Alongside Pidcock, Gloag and Wright, three Belgian riders will be part of the trip to Chile – Brent Van Moer, Xandro Meurisse and Quinten Hermans – as well as Swiss rider Fabio Christen.

"Tom [Pidcock] was the first to raise his hand. He even pushed me even harder to get it done,” Bogaerts told Sporza.

According to the sports director, the Olympic mountain bike champion has also asked to bring off-road tyres so he can stray from the tarmac.

“We've been working on performance at a high level all season long. But sometimes we forget that it also has to be fun. That's why I'm happy to hear that the riders are looking forward to that altitude training camp,” Bogaerts said.

As one of the top-ranked UCI ProTeams, Pinarello-Q36.5 are expected to gain automatic invitations to all three Grand Tours this season, including the Tour de France, and all other WorldTour events. Last year, the team earned its highest ever Grand Tour result thanks to Pidcock’s third place at the Vuelta a España.

Pinarello-Q36.5 are owned by South African billionaire Ivan Glasenberg, who holds significant investments in the brands Pinarello and Q36.5.

When pro-Palestine protestors forced the early abandonment of the Vuelta a España’s final stage in September – the fourth stage of the race to be curtailed – it triggered a chain reaction. In the weeks that followed, Israel-Premier Tech, the focus of the protests, backtracked on earlier assurances and announced a new name and nationality, accepting that their future in the sport was untenable without change. The immediate consequence, however, was the cancellation of the podium ceremony for the GC top-three and the jersey winners.

Race victor Jonas Vingegaard was understandably peeved. “Yeah, it’s shit to end it like this,” he muttered inside a Visma-Lease a Bike car, in footage later shown in the team’s post-race documentary. It seemed as though everyone would simply drift away – an anticlimactic conclusion to 21 tense, turbulent days.

That was until Tom Pidcock’s mum, Sonja, stepped in with other ideas, laying the groundwork for what became the most spontaneous and intimate Grand Tour celebration in history – or, as social media later declared it, the best podium ceremony of all time.

Sonja and her husband Giles were in Madrid ready to celebrate their son’s third-placed finish in the race. When it became apparent that that wouldn’t be happening as planned, Sonja spoke with Q36.5’s billionaire owner Ivan Glasenberg at the team’s hotel. “I said to Ivan, ‘This isn’t fair – these young men have put all this effort in and have been robbed of their glory’,” Sonja, who organises the Otley Cycle Races, recounts to Cycling Weekly. “I told him we should organise a podium.”

Glasenberg nodded along, but wasn’t following what Sonja was suggesting. “Ivan said that they were all going to dinner that night and that everyone was invited including us. I said to him again, ‘But, Ivan, let’s invite all the teams and make a podium together’. Then he got it and said, ‘That’s a great idea!’ I said to him, ‘I’ll organise it for you, but I don’t have a good contact list except [photographer] Russ Ellis’s phone number’.”

The Q36.5 boss now fully on board with Sonja’s plans, he rang Visma’s manager Richard Plugge, who was immediately enthusiastic. Within minutes, Plugge had set up a WhatsApp group comprising all the relevant teams, and convened a hotel car park meeting with his team’s staff who took on responsibility as ceremony organisers. “If it works, it’s a good conclusion for everyone, and a picture for history,” Plugge said, as recorded in the aforementioned documentary. “And if not, then we tried.”

While Plugge was busy organising the guest list, Visma’s chief business officer Jasper Saeijs was put in charge of logistics. “I said, if we do this, we have to do it right,” Saeijs recalls to Cycling Weekly. “We were never going to have the same quality as the real celebration, but everyone who had made the Vuelta special deserved some kind of celebration.” The first thing he had to do was to tell a downcast Vingegaard that he would get the chance to celebrate. “Jonas was already in his normal clothes, and I told him he had to change into his cycling clothing and prepare for a ceremony.”

Phone calls were made to the race organisers, who confirmed that someone was on their way with the trophies, jerseys and podium backdrop – and were promptly snarled up in congestion in the centre of Madrid. “They didn’t know if they’d be able to make it past the protesters and get to us in time,” Saeijs says. Pidcock’s mum came up with a contingency plan. “If the Vuelta organisers couldn’t make it, I suggested we go to the hotel kitchen and make trophies out of tinfoil!”

Thankfully the podium essentials arrived and Saeijs and his team then set about creating the scene. “We needed the backdrop in place, so we attached it to a rental minivan,” Saeijs says. Only one problem: it wasn’t tall enough. “We needed it to be higher, so I asked one of the mechanics what he thought. We were brainstorming a few ideas and then he said, ‘We have some poles that we can put on top of the car.” According to Sonja, these were in fact traffic cones. “They attached the backdrop to traffic cones on top of a van,” she laughs. “It was a bit wonky, but they straightened it out and in the end it looked amazing.”

As for the podium steps, Visma coolboxes of varying heights took on a new function. “We wrote one, two and three on them using a black Sharpie pen,” recounts Saeijs. Those scribbled letters later became the most-talked about aspect of the ceremony on social media.

With the stage set but darkness descending, attention focused on lighting the rushed-together spectacle. “We parked three of our team cars in front of the podium with their headlights on, but too many people were in the way, so we couldn’t see the podium,” Saeijs says.

Sonja, watching on in admiration as her idea took shape in an hour, policed the crowd, which was swelling with riders and staff from other teams. “I put my bossy race organiser head on and was saying to people, ‘Excuse me, stand over there!’” Relief arrived in the form of TV Denmark, whose crew – glued to Vingegaard throughout the race – offered something far better than car headlights. “They follow Jonas everywhere, and they let us use their stage lights,” Saeijs says.

But the atmosphere still needed one final ingredient. “You need music to lighten up any party,” Saeijs insists. Enter Thijs Roelen, Visma press officer turned impromptu DJ. “He decided on Eye of the Tiger for the entrance of the riders,” Saeijs confirms.

There was also the small matter of playing the right anthem for Vingegaard, although even that proved surprisingly complicated. “Denmark has two types of national anthems, and in the morning the race organisers had asked us to help them in choosing the right anthem to play,” Saeijs says. “Thankfully we had researched it before so we already knew which one was the correct one and we downloaded it.”

Everything set, the moment then came for the car park ceremony to begin. Visma sourced some champagne and spectators handed round beer and pizza – but then, yet another delay. “UAE won the team prize but they were apparently reluctant to join in at first,” Sonja says.

“When they found that Mads Pedersen [green jersey] and Matthew Riccitello [white jersey] were coming, they realised they couldn’t turn it down. They still turned up 30 minutes late, mind you.” When UAE finally arrived – their star rider João Almeida had finished second on GC – the party finally got underway.

“Also funny was that the race organiser who’d brought the backdrop, jerseys and trophies didn’t know the protocol of the ceremony, so we had to be creative with how we did it,” Saeijs remembers. “We said that the GC would go first, then the team prize, and then the jerseys. It was really improvised, and in five minutes we’d decided on the order.” Master of ceremonies was selected almost at random, Sonja remembers: “He was a guy who wasn't used to commentating, and he was naming all the riders quietly without any microphone.”

The moment was captured on smartphones by the hundred or so people gathered, a uniquely improvised celebration pulled together at speed and destined to linger in the memory of everyone who witnessed it. At one point, Sonja noticed Vingegaard looking straight at her. “I’d never met Jonas before, but when he got off the Visma bus in his kit, he was looking across the car park smiling at me. I pointed him out to Giles, and I realised that Jonas was probably the only mum-minded person there. Richard must have told him that it was Tom’s mum’s idea and he was saying thank you to me. It was really lovely, really sweet.”

Balanced on an upturned coolbox, Vingegaard beamed with amused delight. “At first I was disappointed not to get the celebration in Madrid, but fortunately we could make our own celebration and it was a really nice moment, really special,” he said in his team’s documentary. “It shows how, in cycling, even though we’re competitors, we can still get everyone together and celebrate in a nice way.”

The Vuelta’s organisers hope the whole episode remains a one-off, with a return next year to a full-scale finale of spotlights and fireworks in front of thousands of fans. If not, Sonja Pidcock stands ready to help again. “I’d like to do it again for my own benefit but I’m not sure it’ll wash,” she laughs.

“All I wanted to do was to applaud and give my son a hug, but in the end everyone created a fabulous moment. If it was in Madrid, it would have been immense, but they would have celebrated in front of thousands of strangers, and we wouldn’t have got a look-in. As it happened, the riders got to celebrate with the people most important to them, and you could tell by the smiles on their faces that they were so delighted.”

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 18 December 2025. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.

Tom Pidcock will have a British GC teammate with the same first name at Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling next season – and the new Tom is determined to follow in Pidcock’s wheel tracks and turn flashes of brilliance into consistent brilliance.

For the past three years Thomas Gloag has been riding for Visma-Lease a Bike, and the Londonder made an immediate impression with sixth place on GC in his debut race, the 2023 Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. He then went on to ride and complete the Giro d’Italia as an eleventh hour call-up

A training ride crash in August 2023, however, shattered his right kneecap, and he didn’t return to competition until 11 months later. When he did, he won a stage of the Czech Tour just three days into his return, but then a fractured elbow derailed him once again. 2025 passed by with 58 race days but only a modicum of success.

It was decided that a change of environment was needed to further the 24-year-old’s career. “I had a fantastic time at Visma and there were some conversations [about staying] but they were quite clear on what they could offer me,” Gloag told Cycling Weekly.

“They have so many fantastic riders, and I think jumping across to Q36.5, a growing team that should race all three Grand Tours next year, was a better option for me.”

Gloag will not only team up once again with Pidcock who he raced with for Trinity Racing in 2020, but also with fellow VC Londres graduate Fred Wright, and his former coach Kurt Bogaerts who is now the Swiss team’s head of performance.

“Kurt stuck his neck out for me and that meant a lot,” Gloag revealed. “He and the people around him are really smart and it ended up being an easy decision.”

Reflecting on his time with Visma, Gloag said: “The best description for it is up and down. The crash that took me out for a year wasn’t ideal, but it was the best place in the world to learn the ropes because at Visma you get a masterclass in how to be a pro cyclist.

“There’s so much emphasis on the latest cutting edge thing, but the reality is the sexy stuff that is exciting to read about doesn’t contribute to a significantly better performance. The basics are 95% of the sport.

“Visma are really good at the not so sexy stuff, and it’s been the best place to learn those characteristics and traits that have become habits and will hopefully set me up for a long time in the pro peloton.”

Gloag was typically honest when analysing how he can improve in the coming years. “This last season and in 2023, I started quite strongly and finished well, but between March and September I wasn’t as competitive,” he said.

“To be off that top level for six months is a long time, and I want to be at that top level throughout the year, not just in a few small windows.

“I have to be honest and say I’ve always struggled with volume. When I went to an altitude camp with Visma in 2023, I was by far and away the worst rider. That’s probably because I’m not as trained as my age suggests – when I was a second year junior I only averaged 10 hours a week because I was more focused on school.

“My ability to handle volume has never been very good, and it’s always been my Achilles’ heel. Hopefully riding for over 900 hours this year will have boosted my physical base.”

Largely because of Pidcock’s success in 2025 that included a podium finish at the Vuelta a España, Q36.5 have secured guaranteed wildcard entries to all WorldTour events next season, including all the Grand Tours.

“I’d love to go back to a Grand Tour and it would be great to ride one at a decent level, but I’m not bothered whether it’s the Giro or a Crystal Palace crit, the main thing I want to do is ride my bike fast more consistently and be at the front of races,” Gloag said. “The goal is clear: to be at the back less and at the front more.”

The town of Maastricht was the epicentre for all things gravel this weekend, as riders of all age categories and nationalities descended on the southernmost city in the Netherlands for the 2025 UCI Gravel World Championships. With a route comprising a mix of tarmac, steep climbs, gravel bike path, and forest trails, the tech on offer was naturally going to be diverse and experimental, and we saw some intriguing setups across both the pro men's and women's fields.

As expected, aerodynamics played a massive role in this year's addition, and owing to the non-technical terrain on offer, riders played around with tyre width and tread patterns in an effort to save as much weight and watts as possible.

Let's take a look at the bikes and trends that dominated the weekend's racing.

Florian Vermeersch's Colnago G4-X PIGR

After finishing runner-up in the past two editions of the UCI Gravel World Championships, Belgian Florian Vermeersch finally secured his rainbow bands in a hard-fought day in the breakaway.

The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider had access to a Colnago G4-X gravel bike, adorned in a stunning off-the-shelf 'PIGR' metallic-green paint job. The components were all team issue and cannot be specified on the Colnago website. This includes the Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset, pictured here in 54/40T, 11-34T configuration with 170mm cranks - the gearing of which afforded the 81kg Vermeersch enough of a bailout for some of the steeper pitches.

The handlebars and rolling stock were handled by Enve, including the 4.5 SES wheels wrapped in 40mm Continental Terra Speed TR tan wall tyres. The build is finished off with a Fizik Argo Adaptive R1 saddle.

Tom Pidcock's Pinarello Dogma F GR

Florian Vermeersch might have secured the rainbow bands, but it was Tom Pidcock's Pinarello Dogma F GR that stole the show. While some of our readers will rightfully question why Tom was on a Pinarello instead of a team-issue Scott Addict gravel bike, it's due to an ongoing three-year deal he has with the Italian bike brand. (The primary financial backer and holding company owner behind Q36.5, Ivan Glasenberg, also happens to own a controlling interest in Pinarello, which could see the team switch bikes in the coming seasons). Anyway, back to Tom's Pinarello Dogma F GR...

While we didn't notice any hidden tech bits on his Dogma F GR, we were drawn to the bike's incredible use of colour and contrast. The striking red and gold paintwork stood out amid the muted and earthy colours dominating the peloton, as did the unique full tan tyres. These unreleased Vittoria Terreno T30 35mm tyres are made entirely from 92% recycled materials and feature a completely new construction, while retaining the Terreno's trademark fast-rolling centre tread and knobbed shoulder line. Why so narrow? Well, not only does Pidcock possess one of the best skillsets in the peloton, the route wasn't very technical and, as an aero-focussed bike, only has tyre clearance provision for 45mm front/42mm rear. The anodised-green Vittoria Multiway valves also suggest Pidcock was using AirLiner inserts.

The balance of his build comprised an SRAM Red XPLR AXS groupset outfitted with the 10-46T cassette and a single 50T chainring. A Wolf Tooth chain guide was fitted to prevent chain drops. Like most of the field, he opted to use Shimano Dura-Ace road pedals as opposed to MTB/gravel-specific SPD-style options.

Marianne Vos' Cervelo Aspero-5

We love the modified Cervelo Aspero-5 Marianne Vos used on the weekend. It represents what got us all into racing in the first place and shows gravel racing is still in a state of experimentation - something we hope stays around for a while still.

Marianne's Aspero-5 caught our attention initially for what looked like a mismatched tyre sidewall. Closer inspection revealed something more intriguing: a gravel/road tyre mullet setup comprising a 45mm Vittoria Terrano T70 front tyre and 40mm Corsa Pro Control at the rear - another nod to the course's lack of technical terrain.

Another standout tech highlight, but something we've seen employed before by the Dutch rider, was the self-inflating/deflating Gravaa Kaps system hubs, laced to Reserve wheels. These special hubs allow the rider to adjust pressure on the fly, nullifying the effects of corrugated surfaces and reducing puncture risk entirely. Like Pidcock, Vos elected an SRAM Red XPLR AXS 1x setup, but paired a smaller 48T ring to the 10-46T cassette.

Lorena Wiebes' Specialized S-Works Crux

Lorena Wiebes held off a charging Marianne Vos to clinch elite women's race at the UCI Gravel World Championships, aboard a Specialized S-Works Crux. Perhaps the most straightforward setup in the field, Lorena's race bike was built for pure speed, and she admitted she's not the most tech-savvy rider in the gravel bunch, citing road racing tech as more of her forte.

Lorena's S-Works Crux is far from an off-the-shelf option, as it features a custom, silver camo-like pattern. The silver forms a reflective base, and then black is added on top, which is then moved around under cling film to achieve the desired effect. It looks superb and stands out among some of the more ordinary-looking bikes in the women's pro field.

One of the trends at this year's race was the propensity for narrower tyres, something which goes against the current grain of riders using rubber as wide as 2.1in. As a result, Weibes elected to wrap her Roval Terra CLX II in 40mm Specialized Pathfinder Pro 2Bliss Ready tyres complete with 'transparent' tan wall.

Other than that, her bike was fairly standard, utilising Tacx Deva bottle cages, a Specialized S-Works Power saddle, the newly released Roval Alpinist Cockpit II bar arrangement, and SRAM Red XPLR AXS groupset.

Matej Mohorič's Merida Silex prototype

Matej Mohorič is no stranger to starting UCI Gravel World Championships aboard unreleased Merida gravel bikes. The Slovenian won the 2023 edition using the second-generation Merida Silex, a week before it was unveiled to the press in Scandiano, Italy. In a similar move, Mohorič entered this year's race in the hope of repeating his heroics of two years ago on a prototype Merida Silex gravel bike.

The new bike was painted in a custom, multi-coloured design with green accents referencing his national jersey. From what we can see, the new Silex features a beefier headtube, fork, and downtube, while the seat-tube junction ditches the previously kinked angling for a new, smoothed-off profile.

Mohorič elected to use a complete, road groupset - in this case, a sponsor-specific 2x Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 chainset, likely in a 54/40T, 11-34T gearing configuration. Component supplier Vision provided the Metron integrated cockpit and what appears to be unmarked prototype gravel wheels.

In the wake of the UCI Road World Championships in Rwanda, focus now shifts to the UCI Gravel World Championships, where rainbow jerseys will be awarded this weekend.

The fourth edition of the event is scheduled to take place in Limburg, the southernmost province of the Netherlands, with start lists packed full of road WorldTour talent.

As first revealed by Cycling Weekly in June, Tom Pidcock (Great Britain) will make his Gravel Worlds debut this year, and leads the men's elite start list in the absence of the reigning champion, Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands), who has chosen to rest ahead of the cyclo-cross season.

There will still, however, be two previous winners in the men's race in Matej Mohorič (Slovenia) and Gianni Vermeersch (Belgium), as well as a raft of WorldTour riders, such as: Tim Merlier (Belgium), Tim Wellens (Belgium), Connor Swift (Great Britain) and Nils Politt (Germany).

Notable retired road pros listed on the men's start list include Romain Bardet (France), Greg Van Avermaet (Belgium) and Zdeněk Štybar (Czech Republic).

In the women's elite race, last year's champion Marianne Vos (Netherlands) will defend her rainbow bands, against her predecessor Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland), who won in 2023.

The women's start list also packs a wealth of WorldTour road pros. Fresh from her 25th victory of the season, Lorena Wiebes will be part of a strong Dutch squad alongside Mischa Bredewold, Puck Pieterse, Pauliena Rooijakkers and Shirin van Anrooij.

Silvia Persico (Italy), Ashleigh Moolman Pasio (South Africa) and Tiffany Cromwell (Australia) are also all set to take part.

There is only one previous winner of gravel cycling's marquee event, Unbound Gravel 200, across both start lists: Rosa Klöser (Germany).

The UCI Gravel World Championships, set across shorter distances, tend not to attract the leading gravel pros, who instead focus on the Life Time Grand Prix series. "It's a question of logistics, money, and career sustainability," US rider Lauren de Crescenzo wrote in an article on Cyclingnews.

The championships begin on Saturday 11 October with the 131km women's elite race, scheduled to start at 11:00 CET.

The men's elite race is 180km, and will begin on Sunday 12 October at 11:45 CET.

Men's elite start list