Sky’s the limit for Brad’s new boy
Britain’s most exciting young rider believes he has made right decision in joining Team Wiggins
If you had not heard of Tom Pidcock prior to yesterday the chances are you will have done so by now. It may not have been in a context Pidcock would have wanted – or deserved. But that, unfortunately, is cycling at the moment.
Sir Bradley Wiggins’s pointed advice to the 18-year-old star of his eponymous development team to “steer clear” of Team Sky because “they will ruin you” was always going to garner headlines.
Wiggins (who made the initial comment half-jokingly but was later offered the chance to clarify his remarks and instead chose to double down on them) has an increasingly fractious relationship with his former employers, owing to the fallout over his use of medication while a member of the team.
But while there may have been some venom attached to his words, they were not without logic.
Sky may be the most successful Tour de France team in the world, having won five of the past six editions. Wiggins believes other bright young British things have erred in going to Sky too soon. “[Olympic gold medallist] Owain Doull should have stayed with us, really, because it’s like he’s gone backwards a little bit.”
Pidcock – the most exciting young talent in British cycling by some distance – is confident he has made the right move in joining Team Wiggins.
He picked up junior world titles in cyclo-cross and on the road last year, as well as junior Paris-roubaix. But the Leeds-born rider says: “I think I’m starting at the Tour de Yorkshire [in early May] with one race before which is Premier calendar.”
Pidcock’s focus in the short term remains very much on cyclo-cross. Having finished 15th in his first outing at under-23 level at the world championships in Valkenburg, he has unfinished business on that score. Pidcock signed a two-winter deal with Belgian outfit Telenet and wants to win an elite cross worlds before moving to the Worldtour. “You spend at least three years in the under-23s is the unwritten rule. You’ve got to give your body time to develop. You need to take it step by step. I’ve ridden elite and you can really tell. Every corner is bang, bang, bang… It’s relentless.” Ultimately, though, there is no doubt in Pidcock’s mind that he wants to end up on the road – and when he does it will be for good. No mixing things up with track. (“Yeah but it’s boring,” he said when it was put to him that might be the easiest route to Olympic glory. “I’d rather not have an Olympic medal than have to spend four years on the track! Anyway, the worlds jersey is much better than an Olympic medal. You get to wear it for a start.”) Nor will he keep his hand in with cyclocross to stay sharp. “If you want to work on your bike handling you’d do it on an MTB or dirt jump bike,” he argued. “I may do a bit of those. But cross bikes are so specific. Plus I think cross would just get tedious after a while. Eventually I’d have to commit fully to road.”
Which begs the question, what sort of a road rider will Pidcock become? His versatility – he also won the British national circuit race championships and the national scratch title on the track last season – has already seen him touted as a ‘Mini-sagan’ after Slovakia’s three-time road champion Peter Sagan, who began life as a mountain bike rider.
It is far too early to tell. Pidcock weighs just 58kg (9st 2lb), albeit he has “put on 10kg [1st 8lb] since last January”. He said: “I want to say classics rider but for Roubaix you need to be like 80kg [12st 8lb]. I don’t think I’ll ever be that. But yeah, one-day racing I think…”
And the comparisons with Sagan? “I prefer [cyclo-cross star] Mathieu van der Poel,” he replied.
A young rider with a sense of humour and his own mind. He will need all of those qualities over the next few years with the number of people offering him advice.