Now Mark Cavendish has retired from professional cycling, it is no exaggeration to say that Tom Pidcock is the biggest male star in British men’s cycling. The 25-year-old has won Olympic mountain bike gold twice, has been cyclo-cross world champion, and is often the best British hope at the biggest races.
It is all the more puzzling, then, that it seems highly likely that the man from Leeds will not be present at next year’s Tour de France. To many outside of the world of cycling, he might as well have jumped into obscurity. Other than the Olympics, the Tour is all that cycling is to most.
In case you missed it, Pidcock now rides for Q36.5 after leaving Ineos Grenadiers. If you had missed that, where have you been? I even clocked it, and I was doing my best to ignore cycling-related news last week, on holiday, but it is seismic. Pidcock will no longer be on the WorldTour, and will no longer have automatic entry to the biggest races, relying instead on wildcard invites for his ProTeam.
Q36.5 have never won a WorldTour race, and have only ever finished on the podium of a WT event once. They’ve never ridden a Grand Tour. This is an entry into the unknown. Imagine Erling Haaland leaving Manchester City to sign for a team like Southampton, a team that has never even hinted at being in the Champions League, let alone win it.
Pidcock is a star, and has now gone from being a medium fish - with a loud voice and a big salary - in a big pond, to being the biggest fish in a small pond. It is interesting that this move happened, rather than one to another WT team (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe always seemed the most likely, given Pidcock’s Red Bull connections), but it was clearly the best move possible for all parties.
Pointedly, in Ineos’ press release announcing his departure, the team’s CEO John Allert said: “Tom has some big multi-disciplinary goals and we believe this decision enables both of us to pursue our future ambitions.”
Ineos Grenadiers recorded their worst-performing season ever on the road in 2024 – scoring just 14 wins – and are keen to return to their Grand-Tour-winning heights. This appears not to have aligned with Pidcock’s desire to spread his talents across cyclo-cross and mountain biking, disciplines in which he has won world titles.
That multi-disciplinary drive seems key to the reason why Pidcock pushed to move away from Ineos, and why Q36.5 will be a good fit for him. The Swiss ProTeam is backed by billionaire Ivan Glasenberg, who also owns a controlling stake in Pinarello, the brand which Pidcock has been using on and off-road. Now at Q36.5, he will be riding Scott bikes on-road thanks to an existing deal, but will use Pinarello in his MTB and cyclo-cross endeavours, a clear backing of the young Brit by the bike brand.
Reading between the lines, Ineos seemed keen to curtail some of Pidcock’s off-road racing, and that does not seem likely at Q36.5, where he will be given free reign to design a calendar which suits his multi-disciplinary skillset. With this freedom, he will hope to thrive, and not be forced onto programmes which he feels do not work for him.
Last month, at Rouleur Live, the 25-year-old admitted that he never felt confident talking about himself as a Tour de France GC rider. “It was what I needed to say,” he said of his apparent GC ambitions. "Everything I've ever been good at I've believed in it, that I can be good at it. I don't say anything that I don't believe. The last few years going to the Tour I haven't known what I wanted. It doesn't create a nice experience, I really want to find what I want to get out of it and be realistic.”
So, perhaps, being free of any Tour pressure will be good for Pidcock, allowing him to tailor a schedule around the Classics, a style of racing which he is good at - he is a winner of the Amstel Gold Race and Strade Bianche, and has finished on the podium of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Dwars door Vlaanderen.
His new situation reminds me of Mathieu van der Poel’s at Alpecin-Deceuninck, ostensibly a team built around the Dutchman that has grown into more than that over time, but with the multi-discipline star at its heart. It might be that Pidcock needs that kind of absolute backing.
However, it will not be easy. Q36.5 might be backed by a billionaire, but they are not Ineos Grenadiers, even an underperforming one. The level of support will be different, as will the calibre of the riders working for him at key races, not that we should be too critical before we see them in action. It would be natural to expect some teething issues, and given the team have to rely on invites to races, it might not be plain sailing to some start lines.
Pidcock did not seem happy at Ineos, especially in the last few months of 2024. This new opportunity gives him the fresh start he craved, the responsibility, and the power. All the biggest star in British cycling has to do now is win some bike races. Simple.
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