For Tom Pidcock, stage 13 was far from unlucky. The Pinarello-Q36.5 rider infiltrated the day's huge breakaway with the intention of winning the stage, and while he was unable to take the honours, finishing third, his remarkable performance saw him leap up the Tour de France general classification standings.
Gaining a total of 7:28 on the GC favourites, including his four-second time bonus, Pidcock heads into Saturday's brutal stage 14 in fourth overall, just nine seconds behind Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe). And while he remains a whopping 4.15 behind overall leader Tadej Pogačar, the Slovenian's team boss at UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Mauro Gianetti, has a wary eye on the Brit.
"We saw today Tom Pidcock regained seven and a half minutes in the standings," Gianetti told CyclismActu after Friday's stage at the Tour de France. "He got back in the standings, he's also starting to be a bit dangerous either for us or for others, and tomorrow there will be others, so we must remain focused and not lose the focus on the final goal, which is the most important."
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Friday's race was not a good one for Lidl-Trek, the team missing the initial break and using many of their riders to regain contact to enable points classification leader, Mads Pedersen, to sprint at the intermediate sprint. While this worked, they were unable to defend Juan Ayuso's fourth place overall, the Spaniard dropping one place and starting Saturday's stage seven seconds behind Pidcock.
Despite Pidcock proving himself as both a climber and a GC rider at last year's Vuelta a España, where he was third overall, Ayuso is unperturbed by the loss of time.
"Tom [Pidcock] is a super good rider, so you don't want him gaining time," Ayuso said on Friday. "He passed me in the general classification, but the gap is not big, so it's OK. I would have preferred not to have him so close, but it's all right.
"Tomorrow will be a different day. Today was really hard, averaging 50 km/h on a stage like this is quite impressive. Riders like me suffered because of the high speed over such a long flat period, so tomorrow the climbs finally come, and I'm looking forward. I know all about tomorrow's stage. The team and I did a reconnaissance of it."
With more than 3,900m of vertical ascent across four classified climbs during Saturday's stage in the Vosges, the stage is set to be another GC showdown. In gaining so much time on Friday, Pidcock is sure to have made a huge effort, so his powers of recovery will face a stern test. Should he fail that test we could see him slip back down the standings. At least that's what his rivals are hoping.
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