Giles Pidcock has given up setting any expectations for his 23-year-old son.
Still in the infancy of his career, Tom’s palmares are incredibly impressive: mountain bike Olympic gold medallist, cyclo-cross world champion and winner of the prestigious Alpe d’Huez climb at last year’s Tour de France.
When the race gets under way in Bilbao on Saturday, the target is for another stage and maybe a spell in the leader’s yellow jersey but not overall victory.
But as his father puts it: “One thing you learn about Tom is not to set your expectations too low as he’ll always surprise you. You’ll be watching a race and then you think ‘f***ing hell how did he do that?!’ Nothing surprises us anymore.”
Pidcock Sr runs his own financial management firm, Fensham Howes, and it was at the office on Bastille last year that he set himself up in a meeting room to part-work part-watch. By the end, the entire workforce had upped tools and congregated to watch him descend at a top speed of 62mph and then leave the best climbers in the world trailing in his wake.
This year, he will leave the environs of the office to be in France with the family for the Alpine stages, the latest stepping stone for their 5ft 5in, nine-stone cycling son, who has lofty aims well beyond this three-week race.
“His ambition is to be the best cyclist and best bike rider ever,” says his father of a target that is said by his son without a glimmer of arrogance.
Pidcock can remember seeing something different in him as a six-year-old able to keep pace with the adults on the cycling commute to school. A year later, he lost his first bike race aged seven to Pfeiffer Giorgi, herself now a pro rider, and was mightily stroppy in the aftermath.
He takes any losses well now, thanks according to his family to the Chimp Paradox mindset instilled into him at British Cycling, the mantra of the long-term psychiatrist Steve Peters there. At their Manchester headquarters, there has long been an excited buzz about Pidcock.
Its performance director Stephen Park remembers his first live event in the role was the 2017 World Championships and having the opportunity to ride with a then 17-year-old Pidcock.
“This was an easy ride and the next thing I see is Tom doing a wheelie alongside me and then his wheel comes down and he bunny hops onto a three-foot wall,” he recalled. “I was like ‘can you calm down?’. I didn’t need him to get injured on my first job.” Pidcock was crowned junior time trial world champion that week.
The other recollection that sticks in the mind is his Olympic gold ride and how on a brutally hot Tokyo day, he crossed the line well clear of the chasing pack looking as fresh as a daisy.
“The guy in second, a world-class rider, looked like he couldn’t turn another crank,” said Park. “Tom looked like he could do another lap.”
Sir Chris Hoy remembers hearing the first whispers of this new British wonderkid on the bike, which so often goes unfulfilled. Not in Pidcock’s case.
“It’s an embarrassment of riches that someone can be so talented,” said Hoy. “He’s so young and think of what he’s already achieved, that’s enough for one rider’s palmares. Tom harks back to Eddy Merckx, he’s a racehorse or greyhound straining at the leash. He’s just a one-off in this day and age.”
And while the Tour is being billed as a head-to-head between Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, Hoy believes Pidcock could find himself in the mix.
“You just never know,” he said. “He might not be the team leader going into the Tour but I think INEOS would be stupid to look beyond him.”
There is the assumption from most that, at some point, Pidcock will have to focus on just one discipline and chase the grand tour having made no secret of his desire to follow Sir Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas as British Tour winners.
But Dad doesn’t think that sole focus will come anytime soon. “The problem for someone like Tom is it would be quite mentally tedious to focus on a grand tour only. That’s much less fun. He wants to be a pro bike rider for a long time and to keep it as fresh and exciting as long as he can.”
