ITV commentator Ned Boulting has backed British star-in-the-making Tom Pidcock as the man to watch at this year’s Tour of Britain.
Pidcock, 23, will be part of the home fan favourites INEOS Grenadiers’ line-up at the race and he added to his reputation as one of cycling’s most exciting talents when he won a stage at this year’s Tour de France. To many British sport fans he has become a recognisable name thanks to his Olympic gold in the cross country mountain bike race at Tokyo 2020 as well as his triumph at the UCI World Cyclo-Cross Championships in February.
This year’s Tour of Britain - an event Pidcock hasn’t competed in since 2018 - gets underway in Aberdeen on Sunday, September 4 before snaking its way down the country for each of its eight stages. After taking in the likes of Durham and Yorkshire, the final stage of the race will conclude on the Isle of Wight on Sunday, September 11.
ITV ’s Boulting, who has become one of the voices of cycling in the UK, will be back commentating on the race as it is broadcast on ITV4, with the Tour of Britain one of his favourite events to be involved with.
“It’s a real highlight of the year for me because it stands apart, it’s got a completely different character from any of the other bike races and - from my perspective - I’m born and bred on this island and it’s nice to bring this quite complex, continental and alien sport home,” he told Mirror Sport .
The Tour of Britain has evolved continuously, as the years have gone on, to make it one of the most demanding events for the world’s best riders. With weather that - unsurprisingly for those of us who live here - can be predictably unpredictable and twisting roads, you have to be at the top of your game to get a result in the race.
“It’s evolved and it’s become a really very important race almost accidentally,” Boulting continued. “Its position in the calendar - it’s one of the last preparatory races to the World Championships, which are obviously the last big focus for a lot of the star riders - and it’s a really hard race.
“Because of the nature of the roads, and the size of the peloton, it’s actually very hard to control properly. All the teams and all the big star names that come here now realise that it’s not just going to be an eight-day procession where everything is easy to control.
“It’s going to be a really tough workout and that’s what it proves to be almost every year. In recent years - you think the last three winners have been Mathieu van der Poel (2019), Julian Alaphilippe (2018) and Wout van Aert (2021) - they are the three biggest superstars in the sport at the moment. There’s no other race that I can think of in the entire calendar that can boast that recent roll call of winners.
“It’s a tough one and none of the stages are flat. They’re always full of these very testing rolling little hills, punching up and down, you can never relax. There’s always twisting and turning around corners. British roads give it a very characteristic difficult course.”
"One day he might be winning the Tour de France"
As with any major race, many eyes are on the stars taking part. But, for Boulting, Pidcock is the man who is currently “head and shoulders” above anyone else.
When you analyse the achievements already for the rider, considering he’s still young at the age of 23, then his performances certainly warrant that excitement. As a result, the Tour of Britain could be a really important contest for him going forward.
“He won a stage on the Tour de France this year, he’s only 23, which is no age at all,” Boulting said. “He is the reigning Olympic mountain bike champion, he’s the cyclo-cross World Champion.
“He is an absolutely thrilling prospect and who knows, one day, he might be winning the Tour de France. His career could go off in all sorts of different directions. He is the natural successor to those three riders I mentioned - the next one in line in that lineage is Tom Pidcock.
“I think he’ll go into the race as the out-and-out favourite and if he can pull it off and win the race overall it would be a really significant moment in what could be, and already is, a truly great career for Tom Pidcock. It’s a big week for him.
“What it would suggest [a victory] is that he can ride for the general classification in major stage races. He’s not done it before, and this could be the first real test of credentials that might come to bear fruit in the coming years.
“We’re going to find out in this coming week a lot more about Tom Pidcock than we knew already going into the race. I’m fascinated to see how he fares.”
Re-Tour De Ned
With autumn fast approaching, Boulting will soon be coming back to one of the more unique parts of his role within cycling as he returns to theatres nationwide with his one-man stage show. The Re-Tour de Ned is a theatrical road map for anyone aspiring to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, with 29 dates in total on the tour.
It will be Boulting’s first stage show tour since 2018 and he will be fully focussed on it throughout October and November once his TV duties are complete.
“This is just absolutely mad,” he said. “It shouldn’t work as an idea but it kind of does. It’s putting a really quite theatrical one-man show all about the Tour de France on stage and touring the country.
“If you said to me 10 years ago that’s what I’d be doing I’d simply wouldn't have believed you and nor would the audiences probably.
“It’s this wonderful coming together, just when autumn is beginning to darken our days and winter’s drawing in, and it’s an opportunity for people to make their way to a brightly-lit theatre, close their eyes and imagine they’re in July and in France.
“It’s a celebration of the Tour de France - all its absolute idiosyncrasies, its lunacies, its madness, its villainies and its great endeavour as well. It’s a lot of fun, we’re going to have a good old laugh but also stop occasionally and marvel at the scale of the whole thing.”
-
Ned Boulting is on tour this Oct/Nov with his one-man stage show Re-Tour de Ned. Tickets are available from www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/ned-boulting
