Tom Pidcock becomes two-time European MTB Champion in Portugal

Double Olympic gold medallist, mountain bike world champion, Tour de France stage winner - there isn’t much Tom Pidcock hasn’t won (or at least, tried) in the world of bikes. The Brit has risen to the top in the off-road scene, as well as on, and continues to win.

Pidcock’s latest victory took place in Portugal’s dusty Melgaço last Sunday at the European MTB Championships in the cross-country (XCO) event. Fellow Brit Charlie Aldridge followed just behind in second, with Denmark’s Simon Andreassen completing the podium.

The Championships were a display of British mountain biking, with Evie Richards taking second in the women’s rCXCO ace, one minute and 19 seconds behind Sweden’s Jenny Rissveds just a few hours before the men's race kicked off.

In the men's event the early race lead came from Switzerland’s Filippo Colombo, with Aldridge hanging defiantly onto his wheel for the majority of the race’s first half, until the Brit pushed past, the white-blue GB kit flashing through the Portuguese woodland.

The nine-lap course snaked through Peneda-Gerês National Park’s woodland, over exposed roots and white-yellow grass before tackling a rock garden fringed with yellow and black hazard signs, a reminder of the danger posed to the riders wearing only helmets and lycra for protection.

At lap five, however, the race rearranged, with Pidcock asserting his dominance over his compatriot, pushing into first for the remainder of the race.

In a time of 1:21:02, Pidcock crossed the line a clear 36 seconds faster than Aldridge, with enough time to free-wheel close to the spectators, high-fiving to the finish line. Denmark’s Simon Andreassen finished in third, one minute and fifteen seconds behind Aldridge. The early race leader Colombo finished in 4th, having fallen victim to the tough terrain, mud covering the white and red of his jersey.

This latest success marks Pidcock’s second victory in the European Championships, after he became the first Briton to win the title in Munich in 2022. Earlier this month, he took his first World Cup victory of the season (his eighth overall), battling into first place at the UCI XCO race in Andorra.

The man from Leeds has dovetailed on- and off-road programmes this year, with a busy Spring Classics campaign and the Giro d'Italia making way for MTB over the summer, before he targets the Vuelta a España at the end of August.