Cycling: Olympics-Pidcock’s off-road passion makes him mountain biker to beat in Paris

(Reuters) – Britain’s Tom Pidcock spends most of his professional cycling life these days on his road bike but when he does venture off of the tarmac and grabs his mountain bike he is unstoppable.

The 24-year-old Yorkshireman, whose day job is with Ineos Grenadiers, has been described as a generational talent on two wheels and looks destined to win a Grand Tour before long.

Few who witnessed his Bastille Day victory on Alpe d’Huez in the 2022 Tour de France will forget his jaw-dropping bike-handling skills as he descended Col du Galibier like lightning.

He also won the Strade Bianche in 2023 — a race with large gravel sections which are meat and drink to Pidcock whose junior days were spent on the cyclo-cross circuit.

While road racing is often tactically complicated, a mountain bike race lets Pidcock’s passion off the leash.

“It’s how I enjoy racing — when you’re just having fun and getting excited by it,” Pidcock says. “It’s difficult for me to concentrate for a full Grand Tour and be patient.”

The way he obliterated a high-quality field at the Tokyo Olympics to claim cross-country gold was astonishing and it was a similar story at last year’s world championships when he stormed away from Swiss great Nino Schurter.

Pidcock will ride the Tour de France this year hunting stage wins or even a podium finish before returning to Paris where he says defending his Olympic cross country title is a priority.

“My priority is mountain biking (at the Olympics) and I’ve made that clear to the British team,” Pidcock, who will also compete in the road race, told Cycling Weekly.

His outings on the mountain bike have been limited this season, and he admits he is something of an outsider. But he underlined his class when he won the World Cup at Nove Mesto for the fourth year in a row, beating Schurter by 32 seconds.

Sadly for fans in Paris, a mouth-watering duel between Pidcock and Mathieu van der Poel is unlikely to happen with the Dutch road world champion prioritising the Tour de France and the Olympic road race this year.

That showdown also failed to materialise in Tokyo when Van der Poel, who like Pidcock has mountain bikes in his DNA, crashed early on, leaving Pidcock to put on a masterclass.

While Pidcock will be red-hot favourite for the men’s race on the Elancourt Hill — the highest point in the Paris region — France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prevot will be the rider to beat in the women’s event as she looks to deliver gold.

The 32-year-old five-time cross country world champion will retire from mountain bikes and switch to road at the end of the season but she has unfinished business in the discipline after failing to finish at the Rio Olympics and then suffering an early crash in Tokyo and ending up 10th.

“This is my last chance to try to be Olympic champion so I don’t want to miss it,” she said after winning at Nove Mesto. “It will be for sure my last on MTB so I want to do everything to be good this year and to try to win the Olympics at home.”

The cross-country races in Paris will feature multiple laps of the 4.4km Elancourt circuit which uses existing trails.

(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Toby Davis)