From 'freak' injury to another shot at that 'elusive' win – Fred Wright finally finds feet at Pinarello-Q36.5 at Tour de France

Fred Wright is still chasing. The 27-year-old may have ridden his way back into the British national champion’s jersey last month but his two national titles – the first coming in 2023 – remain the only number 1s on his results sheet. They do count, but they don’t fully scratch the itch.

"I guess it does, it does play on my mind a little bit," he tells Cyclingnews of his long wait for first victory from a full international pro peloton.

That much was clear from a social media post after back-to-back runner-up finishes at the Rund um Köln and GP Criquielion in May. "It'll come," he wrote, alongside a saddened emoji.

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Wright is now back at the Tour de France, scene of a whole series of his near-miss heartaches over the past few years. He has struggled with the heat but is growing into the race and says the "shape is coming along nicely".

As well as finding his feet in the race he’s also finding his feet at Pinarello-Q36.5, after what was a rough start to life with his new team.

After spending the first six years of his pro career with Bahrain Victorious, Wright made the decision to follow Tom Pidcock to the second-division team, but it has been far from smooth sailing.

It started off with a freak injury sustained at the team’s pre-season altitude training camp in Chile.

"It was on one of the last days, we were going down the descent and it felt something… I couldn’t tell at the time whether something had stung me, or something had gone in my knee," Wright explains.

"Anyway, a few days later, my leg is double the size. I was back in the UK and spending time with my girlfriend and I was like ‘Emily, something’s not right with my knee’, and straight away she was like ‘Yeah, Fred, your leg is not supposed to look like that.

"We're talking, from the ankle up it was, let’s say, not the same size as the other one."

The culprit, it turns out, was a thorn, although quite how it got lodged in his knee is still a mystery.

"It was kind of a freak way it must have gone in. We think on the apex of a corner I must have clipped a bush, but I didn’t feel like I did, but I must have done at the perfect angle. And 10 days later, out pops this little thorn.

Wright says that he can "reflect on it in a funny way", and while it could well have turned out much worse, it did still have a knock-on effect on his season. A course of antibiotics running through a body on the mend from a training camp put Wright on the back foot, and it snowballed from there, with plenty of crashes and illnesses.

"Nowadays, once you lost that consistency, it’s really hard to get back to the top level."

As such, Wright describes his Classics campaign as a "write-off". Previously a top-10 finisher in the cobbled Monuments, he was a bit-part player this time around in his first big personal target with his new team. .

"I just got my head kicked in, basically. And you know, sometimes in terms of shape that can be a good thing, but mentally it wasn't the easiest thing."

Nor was it the easiest thing to suffer another injury to his knee, forcing him to scrap his post-Classics holiday plans and pay several visits to the physio.

"I think there’s a lot of value in stepping away from it all for a very good few days at the right points of the year," he says. "This wasn’t the ideal complete mental switch-off, but from a resting point of view it was kind of perfect."

Getting back into the swing of things and racing with Pidcock

Wright returned in May and entered a string of lower-level one-day races, which, along with the pair of runner-up finishes, saw him place 11th at GP du Morbihan and ninth at Tro-Bro Léon. He then built towards the Tour de France via an altitude camp and the Tour de Suisse.

"One of the reasons I joined the team was to try and get my hands in the air again, and race some smaller races, and get a feel for race finals and everything. And yeah, in that block of races I was really able to do that. It was nice to sort of bounce back and be active in races again. I felt like a new man heading towards this part of the season."

Wright took something of a risk in making that switch of teams, in that Pinarello-Q36.5 is a second-division outfit that’s still establishing itself and still relying on UCI points to enter the biggest races like the Tour de France.

"What I've seen the last few months is that their approach and where they are with things like nutrition… there's nothing I can see that's any different. A lot of the things this team does are more professional and better than the environment I was in before."

In any case, there was already a glaring precedent for how a big-name star was already thriving at Pinarello-Q36.5, with fellow Brit Tom Pidcock winning five races and placing third at the Vuelta a España last year.

Pidcock is a good friend of Wright’s and, he explains, a major factor in his decision to make the move.

"There’s a photo of us racing – I’d love to find it – I think we would have been under-14s and we’re both attacking in a national race in Scarborough. So it goes back a long way, and it was one of the big reasons to join the team.

"And then the team really aligned with my own sort of personal ambitions for what I want for my career, so it was the perfect combination of having someone like him who I’m more than happy to help, and also have my own opportunities elsewhere.

"I'm sort of at a different stage of my career now, as well, where actually, I've got quite a lot of experience. I'm feeling more comfortable in myself as a rider, and being able to use that experience, which is really nice, and it's nice to be able to give that experience to a new team."

While Wright notes that he's more than happy to sacrifice himself for Pidcock whenever they're racing together, he also points out that Pidcock doesn't take much child-minding.

"Man, he is such a good bike rider, and when it comes to positioning and being in the bunch, the job is a lot easier when you've got someone like him who can more or less, well, more or less do it himself.

"I mean, San Remo this year I got caught behind that crash with Tadej and everyone right before the Cipressa, and I was panicking, thinking, 'Oh no, we've got to get back up to Tom'. I didn't quite make it to the front before Cipressa, but then I watched back the video and Tom was perfectly positioned anyway – there wasn't much more I could have done."

Wright talks about working for others, about sharing his experience, and he even mentions being useful in terms of the hunt for those UCI rankings points. But it’s that elusive win that’s really fuelling him.

"Quite a few times in my career I’ve come quite close to some pretty big wins. I guess it does play on my mind a little bit, but one of the reasons I joined this team was to be able to race the way I want to, and I think with tim that'll come.

"It’s been racking up, the times I've been close, but I feel less pressured by it, because I kind of trust that with everything we're putting in place, and what we've got coming up, that something will come eventually."

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