World cyclo-cross champions absolutely slaying the Tour de France are like buses: you wait ages for one, then two come along at once. Tom Pidcock became the second of the breed to win a stage of the 2022 Grande Boucle following Wout van Aert’s victories in Calais and Lausanne, when he rode to a solo triumph atop L’Alpe d’Huez. In fact there was a phase of the stage when one champion – Pidcock – was riding alone at the front, slowly but surely squeezing out a winning lead over Louis Meintjes, while five minutes further down the mountain Van Aert was pacing a rapidly shrinking GC group. The cyclo-crossers had taken over the stage.
And the multitaskers are taking over the Tour. For better and for worse, Tadej Pogačar has been sprinting, climbing, attacking, time trialling and dropping all his rivals on the cobbles; Van Aert has been doing much the same. Even Magnus Cort, another stage winner, has mixed attacking, a bit of climbing and sprinting. Pidcock? Good at climbing, evidently, very good at pacing and judging an effort, and compellingly, viscerally good at descending, of which more later.
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Pidcock is a difficult rider to work out. He tends not to give too much away in interviews though he is as pithy as hell. In the press conference following his win, the first question was: can you explain the experience of riding through the crowds on the Alpe? Pidcock thought for a few seconds, and then said, “No.” To be fair, he did then enlarge on this, describing it as “ridiculous”, and that ‘no’ actually communicated very effectively the magnitude of his achievement and the craziness of the crowds. Far better however, for the goal if not of understanding Tom Pidcock then at least appreciating him, to observe his racing style.
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The north side of the Col du Galibier is probably the harder side to climb, but ride it in the other direction and it offers interesting possibilities for the descender. There are a few hairpins near the top, and a stack of hairpins above Plan Lachat, the point about halfway down where the descent joins the valley and heads down to Valloire. In between, there is a swooping, snaking road with quite a lot of visibility. In this section of road, having attacked over the summit of the…