Backstage at Rouleur Live 2024, there’s a game happening. Tom Pidcock is trying to roll ping pong balls into plastic cups taped to the end of a table and he’s getting frustrated. Within a few minutes of playing, he’s assessing the curvature of the table surface, and is trying to figure out if there is a breeze coming from the heater on the left of him which is impacting the direction in which the ball is rolling. He scores once and nods triumphantly, then he misses a few times and the frustration creeps in. He’s playing against Matt Stephens and he simply has to beat him. There is no other option. This is who Tom Pidcock is.
I sit down with him for an interview a few moments after his game (which – after much debate and to Pidcock’s disgust – was settled in a draw) and we start to talk about his success at the Paris Olympics, where he took the gold medal in the mountain bike race. He won after puncturing and needing a bike change, then closing a gap of almost a minute in a matter of a few laps. His move on the final corner of the race, where he undertook France’s Viktor Koretsky, was genius, a masterclass in bike-handling and tactics. We speak about how it felt to win his second consecutive Olympic gold medal at just 25 years old.
“I guess in some ways, it was like a big relief. But then again at the same time, I felt like it was only as good as expectations,” he states. “I couldn’t help thinking that I haven’t achieved that much on the road, so it’s bittersweet, if you know what I mean.”
Pidcock’s assessment of himself is brutally harsh. I don’t really get what he means, because the British rider has won Amstel Gold Race, Strade Bianche, a stage of the Tour de France, Brabantse Pijl and has finished second at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in just his four years as part of the WorldTour peloton. Most would be happy if they made it to the end of their careers with such illustrious palmarès on the road, but for Pidcock, it’s nowhere near enough. He wants to leave an indelible mark on his sport.
“I want to leave a legacy in cycling in general. I think having different disciplines definitely helps build you as a rider,” he says. “The riders coming to road racing, like Thibau Nys, for example, he’s one of the best in cyclo-cross so that helps him be a bigger name on the road too. It helps create that legacy.”
The Yorkshire-born rider notes that there’s some obstacles in the way of him achieving the lofty…