Tom Pidcock set to prove his ambitious streak at Tour de France

“When he was little I remember having a conversation over the dinner table where I asked him what does success look like, is it being a pro bike rider?,” recalls the elder Pidcock.

“And Tom said ‘no, no, I’ll definitely be one of them – it’s winning a classic, winning Paris-Roubaix, winning a stage of the Tour de France, even winning the Tour de France maybe, that’s what success would look like for me’.”

Part of that premonition will come to pass today in Denmark when 22-year-old Tom Pidcock wheels down the ramp for a 13.2km time-trial that marks the start of the 109th Tour de France – his first.

Dad Giles, who along with his wife has supported, encouraged and followed him nearly every step of the way, will be watching at home on television before heading out to northern France early next week to follow the race in person as it reaches its native territory.

“It’s a bit weird being in the middle of it because it kind of feels – I don’t want to sound unromantic – but it’s a job,” Giles Pidcock tells The Yorkshire Post.

“We’ve grown up watching the Tour de France every July – Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin and now Ned Boulting and David Millar on the TV – it’s always been about the riders, so it’s going to be amazing that someone we brought up as a child is now going to be talked about in the same way as all those other riders.

“Watching him in that first stage will feel quite emotional I guess. But it’s not the end of the journey.

“Being selected for the Tour is a big achievement, but Tom will want to do something with that selection, he’ll want to try and make his mark on the race.”

Few would expect anything less of one of the most versatile young riders in world cycling.

Pidcock has been in the senior ranks barely two years but already has collected an Olympic mountain bike gold medal, a world cyclo-cross title and challenged for wins in a number of the Spring Classics.

His pro team Ineos Grenadiers tested his legs in a three-week grand tour for the first time at last summer’s Vuelta Espana, but the Tour de France is a different matter, an occasion likened by the Pidcocks to last summer’s Olympics.

“As riders, and even us as parents, you train yourself to be level and just focus on the process; training, diet, resting and the racing, and you focus on implementing that plan,” says Giles.

“So when they do well you say ‘right, well done, mission accomplished, what’s next?’ And when they do badly you rationalise it in the same level terms.

“So in the Olympics everyone around us was leaping around excited, we were receiving thousands of text messages and phone calls, and we were thinking it’s not that big a deal, it’s just another race. But then it does dawn on you when people who don’t know anything about cycling recognise an Olympic medal. I think it will be like that with the Tour, it’s the biggest bike race in the world.”

Pidcock’s journey to the race for the yellow jersey has been rapid but comes as no surprise to his father given his son’s love for cycling.

“He’s ridden every day since he was about three,” says Giles, himself a cyclist who organises the Otley Cycle Races which were staged on Wednesday.

“He started off riding his bike to school then he’d go the long way round. The bike is part of him.”

Pidcock has yet to commit full-time to the road – “the rock and roll lifestyle of a mountain biker and cyclo-cross rider suits him” says Giles, and allows him to compartmentalise the season.

His winning mentality – epitomised at the UCI Road World Championships in Harrogate when a disqualification elevated him from fourth to the bronze-medal position but still felt like a loss – is something he gets from both parents. “His mother and I are quite driven to be successful, but I think the rest just comes from within; a combination of self-confidence, desire and belief. Not everybody has that killer instinct.” Asked if there was a specific moment when he realised his son’s potential, Giles says: “The epiphany was in Norway when he won the world time-trial championships (2017).

“He’d already won cyclo-cross worlds, then he won junior Roubaix, and then he won the time-trial. There’s a really strong correlation between winners of the time-trial and those that go on to have good, strong pro careers.

“He wasn’t the favourite but he was so strong and so skillful – I thought then that he might do it, that he might go on to win some big races.”

A journey that continues over the next three weeks.