Tom Pidcock has seven world titles - three in cyclo-cross, four in mountain bike - and two Olympic gold medals in his collection, but he heads into the UCI Road World Championships in Montreal with the "best opportunity so far in my career" to claim a highly coveted rainbow jersey in the elite men's road race on Sunday.
Already a highly decorated cyclist at Worlds, Pidcock has a complete collection of junior, under-23 and elite cyclo-cross world titles. In mountain bike, he's won the under-23, e-MTB and two elite cross-country golds.
Pidcock's fortunes on the road haven't been as lucrative. He won the bronze medal as an under-23 on home soil in Yorkshire, being out-sprinted by Samuele Battistella (Italy) and Stefan Bissegger (Switzerland) after playing cat-and-mouse in the final kilometre. His best result in the elite road race was a sixth place in Leuven in 2021.
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Since then, Pidcock has evolved as a road competitor, winning a stage of the Tour de France on l'Alpe d'Huez in 2022, Strade Bianche in 2023, and the Amstel Gold Race in 2024, and he has emerged as one of the top favourites to win in Montreal on Sunday.
"I think becoming Road World Champion would be something that would be truly amazing in my career, because it's going to be so hard to win," Pidcock told a small group of journalists from his training camp in Colorado earlier this week. "I think this is my best opportunity so far in my career, that's for sure."
Pidcock gained some confidence for Worlds after racing the Grand Prix de Montréal earlier this month, where he finished sixth, just behind Remco Evenepoel, and 36 seconds behind winner Isaac del Toro.
The Worlds route, however, only consists of 12 laps of the quite punchy Mont Royal circuit rather than the 16 tackled in the GP and could suit the Briton more strongly.
"I think it will be better," Pidcock said. "Sixteen [laps] was a lot; it made it really hard, but not in a way that makes the racing better. I think at first I thought, because the [Worlds] race is longer, it's not going to be as explosive in the final, but actually I think it will be. Perhaps more people will have more explosivity in the final because we're only doing 12 laps."
Del Toro will be among his main competitors along with Paul Seixas (France), Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert (Belgium), and Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) on Sunday. Like Belgium, Great Britain have a Classics rider - Pidcock - and climber Adam Yates as co-leaders, with Oscar Onley, Fred Wright, Callum Thornley, James Shaw, Finlay Pickering and Mark Donovan as support riders.
Had defending champion Tadej Pogačar not been injured in a crash during the Vuelta a España, Pidcock said he would have bet on the Slovenian to win a third straight title. In Pogačar's absence, he said, "I think the two stand-out guys are Seixas and Del Toro.
"I think Remco will for sure be good, and he's always the guy that, like you saw in [the GP de] Montreal, I don't know what happened, but he got dropped on the climb, and then he came back because he can keep going. That will definitely be in his favour. But I think the two stand-outs are Del Toro and Seixas. I think they're the guys who can make the difference on the climb more than the rest of us."
Van der Poel practically counted himself out of contention, saying that the course was too hard for him if Seixas and Del Toro throw down like they did in the GP de Montreal, and Pidcock said,
"He's not a guy that bullshits. If it suits him, he says it, and if it doesn't, he also says it, and I agree with him. But for sure, he's not going to travel all the way here to Canada to not try. So he will be at the front; I don't know how far to the front."
Wout van Aert is being tipped as a favourite by the Belgian press, but Pidcock said, "The amount of climbing, you can't hide from that. I think it's not their perfect course, but they will still do well, I have no doubt about that."
Beyond his rivals, Pidcock expects the course to do most of the work in wearing down the competition.
Barely a metre of flat road
There is hardly a metre of flat road on the 13.4km lap, which has two significant climbs: the 1,600-metre Voie Camillien-Houde with gradients of 10% at the start of the lap, and the Ave du Parc uphill run to the finish, along with plenty of technical turns and rough roads.
"It was very attritional," Pidcock said. In the GP de Montreal, "the first eight laps, it just felt like eternity. And then when we started racing, it went quickly; it was hard. The climb, it was a little bit of a headwind in that race - I don't know if that's the prevailing wind or not - but it made it hard, but also hard to make a difference."
Having gotten to know the route, Pidcock said he would save more energy. "I didn't ride so conservatively, and I think it's a course that favours saving for one big move. If you ride it attritionally and make efforts all the time, then I think in the end it's difficult to then make the proper difference to get people off your wheel."
What he has learned from the GP was that a long-range move may not work.
"You quickly come back when you start tiring. So it doesn't favour [a long attack] so much, but undoubtedly that's how it will be raced. But that definitely favours teams like us, like the USA. I think the USA probably have the most depth of any team."
While riders like Evenepoel and Del Toro have been in Montreal all week, Pidcock specifically chose to come in at the last minute, even if it means crossing a few time zones and dealing with jet lag because he can be more relaxed.
"I like getting out and being in that environment for as little time as possible," he explained. "World Championships or Olympics, whatever, if you go there and you're there early with the team in a hotel, the wait is endless.
"It's better training and a better climate here than perhaps near Montreal or Vermont, where a lot of the riders went [to train]."
While in Colorado, Pidcock has been doing specific efforts for the Voie Camillien-Houde, a climb of around 3.5 minutes and training at high intensity at altitude.
"I've felt really good these last few weeks, actually, even being at training altitude. I did some VAM efforts at 2,500 meters for the first time ever, and I actually managed to do them, so that must be quite a good thing. I feel really, really good, to be honest. But yeah, [with] one-day races, you can get it wrong, even if you feel good leading into it."
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