Tom Pidcock starts his new racing season in southern Spain this weekend, a refreshed and rejuvenated athlete, now looking forward to – rather than dreading – competing in this year’s Tour de France. The double Olympic gold medallist has rebooted his career since moving to the Q36.5 team at the start of 2025. The athlete who came out of the blocks a year ago, after a painful exit from Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Grenadiers, was Pidcock V2.0, reinvented as a Grand Tour contender capable of finishing third overall in last year’s Vuelta a España.
That breakthrough result has altered Pidcock’s mindset. For a rider who once dismissed the Tour de France as “boring”, he is now almost enjoying the thought of returning to the world’s biggest bike race in July.
“The move into this team was a massive thing for me,” says Pidcock, winner of the Olympic mountain biking event in 2020 and 2024. “Physically, I’ve got what I’ve got. That doesn’t change.
“But how you get it out of yourself – the new level of motivation, new level of confidence in the people around me, but also the level of confidence that they have in me – is really powerful.”
Pidcock has known great highs and great lows in the Tour: his daredevil and prestigious win on Alpe d’Huez in 2022 was as spectacular as his fumble, when sprinting for a stage win in Troyes in 2024, was demoralising.
He says now that he is better suited to the hothouse of July in France, although he admits that he “wasn’t exactly excited” when he found out that Q36.5 would be heading to Barcelona for this year’s Grand Depart.
“I need to refind that excitement for the Tour,” he says. “There’s such high pressure and expectations from external people, but also internally, from teams. In our team, I think it will be different. My main goal is to go there and have fun and enjoy it and I think that will bring success. Obviously, we’re going to have to train our balls off.
“We’re going to be in the best shape we can be. But I think if we can go and enjoy the stress of the Tour, then that will help change my mindset back to how it should be.”
There’s always times in a season where you haven’t got much motivation or willpower
There’s always times in a season where you haven’t got much motivation or willpower
Tom Pidcock
At the lowest point during his years with Ineos Grenadiers, Pidcock found the relentless expectations draining. “Are you going to win a stage? Are you going to finish on the podium?” he says, mimicking the constant questions aimed at riders.
Yet expectations this summer will be even higher, after his third-place finish in Madrid last September. But like others who have left Ineos Sport Pidcock has flourished elsewhere.
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“I’m confident that my team can get me in a good place in terms of my physical shape. And mentally, I’d say I’m very strong, to be honest. And the pressure doesn’t really get to me.
“[The Tour] is the biggest race in the world. It’s the race that inspired me when I was young. It’s inspiring probably millions of other kids, but to race, it’s not the most enjoyable. Hopefully we can change that.”
His time with Ineos Grenadiers, where he had originally been expected to develop, petered out into acrimony and disenchantment. In late 2024, it became very apparent that Pidcock’s career goals were not those of his employers.
While Pidcock’s people sought greater control over his race programme, Ineos Grenadiers team management was forced to push back. As the problems intensified, there were disputes over team leadership, team selection, what role Pidcock would play and which members of team staff worked on which race.
A source close to the team management described Pidcock’s fallout with Ineos Grenadiers as a “shit show”. “They ended up compromising and then blaming Tom. It wasn’t his fault. They let him do it.”
There were times, in late 2024, when, as relations with Ineos Grenadiers worsened, Pidcock seemed almost burnt out.
“No, I think I was trying,” he says. “There’s always times in a season where you haven’t got much motivation or willpower. I was doing my best with what knowledge I had around me, what help I had.”
In the late summer of 2025, it was the Vuelta, far more laid-back than either the Giro or the Tour, that provided the best environment for him finally to prove his Grand Tour credentials.
For the first time in his career, his motivation stood the test of three weeks of racing, as he went toe to toe with double Tour winner, Jonas Vingegaard, and Tadej Pogačar’s talented Portuguese team-mate, João Almeida.
“Before, I wasn’t at that level to compete for a podium,” Pidcock says. “When you’re competing just to stay in the top 10, I struggle to find the motivation to do that and have to battle [with] that for three weeks. It’s just draining.”
Now, Pidcock says, after a winter training camp at altitude in Chile, he is at a higher level. After early season races in Spain, he will target Tuscan gravel race Strade Bianche and the coveted “monument”, Milano Sanremo, in March.
“I don’t know where the ceiling is, whereas before [I was] touching the ceiling for a few years. Now,” he says of his Q36.5 team, “we’re exploring, we’re seeing what we can do differently, how we can improve. We’re exploring new limits and we’re not afraid to fail.”