Cycling is Tom Pidcock’s world and he invited us to live in it for two glorious hours.
If Adam Peaty is the beast shouldering the weight of the world and Tom Daley the child actor who won the Oscar, Pidcock is the prodigy who knows no fear.
Fans were allowed to line a course in Izu that he shredded, the sound of cowbells puncturing the humid air and driving Pidcock to victory by 20 seconds, broadcast live on Eurosport and discovery+.
Olympic gold came to him at the age of 21 in mountain biking, but you sense if it hadn’t been in that discipline, it could just have easily been another.
The Brit’s career is the cycling equivalent of a year-round variety performance.
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He races as a neo-pro on the road for Ineos Grenadiers, rides the cycle-cross circuit in the winter and now mountain biking in the summer.
It’s turning into the zeitgeist of the sport, with Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert both emerging from a background in the mud and thunder of cyclo-cross.
“I don’t see why it hasn’t been done before,” he said of his high-wire act of scheduling and switching disciplines.
“I think it’s to do with equipment. These days a cross bike is pretty much the same as a road bike. Maybe back in the day it was heavier. I don’t see why the line can’t be blurred, because riding a bike is riding a bike, it’s two wheels. I’ve grown up on riding all different kinds of bikes.”
Does he have a favourite? “Probably whichever one I’m winning.”
Pidcock first took to two wheels at the age of three, measuring the success of rides with his brother Joe on who could get muddiest. Tickings-off for doing wheelies outside the school gates were a daily occurrence; a decade or so later he’d be doing them to celebrate race wins. Pidcock was born in south London but made in Yorkshire, where he still lives with his family a stone’s throw from Roundhay Park in Leeds. He rode to school, regardless of the weather.
His first race? Less said about that the better. His chain came off, he was beaten by a female counterpart and then came tears.
Pidcock’s father Giles represented Great Britain in the 1980 Olympic road race in Moscow and mother Sonia is a physiotherapist who paused her career to support Tom.
He scooped cyclocross and time trial world titles in 2017, and WorldTour teams were soon queuing up to bring him into the fold. With an eye on the future, he resisted their advances.
“There’s no rush for me to have a set direction or to step up,” he said at the time.
“I want to develop. It takes time. I could, but I want to enjoy being young.”
When he did join Ineos Grenadiers in 2021 he started with an excellent Classics season, signposted by third place at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and fifth at Strade Bianche.
Pidcock’s talent is crucial to a change in strategy at Ineos with Dave Brailsford loosening the shackles and encouraging an enterprising approach to one-day racing.
He had plenty of work to do to even secure a place on the start line in Tokyo, with the pressure of earning a stack of ranking points in his maiden World Cup campaign. In his debut on the circuit in Albstadt, he upgraded his grid position by 71 places and then crashed past van der Poel to win in Nove Mesto by more than a minute, a record. The job was done for Tokyo but then came a horrific crash on the road at Tour de Suisse that saw his bike snap in half and his collarbone do the same.
It was broken and ambitions of gold at the Games hung in the balance for an athlete who had sailed through his career untroubled.
Pidcock threw himself into intensive rehab and installed a heat chamber in his spare room to replicate Tokyo conditions with typical brio.
It was more than enough, and the way he sailed past eight-time world champion Nino Schurter on the third lap suggested he’d never fallen off his bike. Even when he was three.
He borrowed from the Adam Peaty thesaurus when it came to summing it all up.
“I’m happy this s**t’s only every four years because it’s f***ing stressful,” he said.
Stream every unmissable moment of Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 live on discovery+, The Streaming Home of the Olympics.
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