Tom Pidcock was positive for COVID-19 for six days after he left the Tour de France before stage 14 but the Briton believes he has recovered in time to target a second consecutive gold medal in the mountain bike event in Paris on Monday.
Pidcock will ride the mountain bike event in Elancourt to the southwest of Paris on Monday, July 29 and then lead Great Britain’s men’s squad in the Olympic Games road race on Saturday, August 3. The women’s mountain bike event is on Sunday, July 28.
“I’m fine,” Pidcock said succinctly of his recovery from COVID-19, as he spoke from the Team GB hotel on the outskirts of Paris on Friday morning.
“The plan was always to finish the Tour, getting sick was not part of that plan, and we have to adapt to that.
“I’m in a good place. I’m happy with where I am. I’ve recovered well. And, yeah, I think I can be pretty content with how my recovery went.”
Pidcock and other riders did a final recon ride of the Elancourt Hill circuit on Wednesday. Rain has since soaked the course but will not change the racing, nor the opinion of Pidock and other athletes who took part in a test event last autumn.
The twisting circuit up and down Elancourt Hill is largely a man-made gravel track with added rocks and other technical features. Pidock does not like it but will still race for gold.
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“It’s not the best course in the world but it’s the same for everyone,” he said. “It’s bland and I think they could have done a better job of making a more mountain bike course.
“I love mountain biking for the reasons that drive us to enjoy it. That’s the courses you get to ride, the places you get to go to. When you just gravel over a nice hillside, it’s not really mountain biking.”
The road race will have a different dynamic
The 24-year-old Yorkshireman won gold in the mountain bike in Tokyo and has continued to successfully combine the discipline with his professional road racing career with Ineos Grenadiers.
A second gold off-road is again his major goal, with COVID-19 and the lottery of the 90-rider, rolling road race, making a second success in the road race more difficult.
“My main goal is the mountain bike race. I’m going to think about the road race on Tuesday,” he said, lining up his objectives and hopes.
“I would be happy with the medal of the road race. The teams are pretty small, so it could be quite a different racing dynamic. It’s quite an unknown. Maybe we have to race a bit more open minded, a bit more aggressively than we would normally with teams to control.
“You could definitely play it smart and kind of get a free ride to the finish in certain situations. And it’s going to be important to have a strong team so that we can be near the front with numbers to play those games.”
“It’s suited to the guys with raw power, the big sprinters like Van der Poel, Pedersen and others. But a guy like Remco Evenepoel can also go far because the teams are very small. It’s going to be quite a lot of maybe pretty unstructured.”
Winning a gold medal in the mountain bike race in Tokyo was a career highlight for Pidcock. He has still to fulfil his ambitions in Grand Tours but that is a goal for the long-term future. The summer of 2024 is about more Olympic success.
“Winning in Tokyo was one of those moments I’ll never forget,” he said. “The Olympics transcends cycling as a sport. The feeling of representing your country at the Olympics is not like anything else.
“You’re kind of representing the whole nation and you feel that it’s kind of a weight on your back. It can push you along if you let it, or if you don’t manage it, well, maybe you fall backwards. But you can use that to kind of motivate yourself, it pushes you on.
“It’s also a platform to inspire people. Personally, that means a lot to me, being able to inspire and give the right example, by setting an example.”
