"He was looking for a team that shared his values” - Why Tom Pidcock swapped INEOS for Q36.5

After being one of the most talked about riders during the recent off-season, Tom Pidcock starts 2025 reinvigorated and ready to face a new campaign at a new team. When it was announced the double Olympic champion would be leaving the INEOS Grenadiers, there was much reported interest from across the peloton, so just why and how, did Pidcock end up at the Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team?

“Andrew McQuaid (Pidcock's agent ed.) contacted me and said, ‘Can you have a conversation with Tom?’ Tom and I spoke, and it was a meeting of the minds,” recalls Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team boss, Doug Ryder of the first contact with his new star rider, in conversation with Velo. “I just asked Tom where he was and where he wanted to go, and we had a really nice conversation. Tom is a mountain biker at heart, and mountain biking is more open. He was looking for a team that shared those values.”

Although Pidcock was obviously taking a bit of a risk in moving off the World Tour to Q36.5, the former Dimension Data team do have previous World Tour experience and according to Ryder, that was also key in luring Pidcock to the project. “We’ve been a World Tour team before. We’ve worn the yellow jersey, won many Tour stages, and had great riders come through,” he explains. “For Tom, we were attractive because we act and compete like a World Tour team, even at this level.”

“When all this was going down, and he wasn’t happy, and was looking potentially for a change, we were a team that was attractive to him. We had spoken to other riders, too. We were in the market,” Ryder continues. “When the rumours started to fly, riders reached out to me and said please make this happen. Giacomo Nizzolo said it would lift our profile and give the team purpose. Gianluca Brambilla said it would be a privilege to race alongside a rider like Pidcock in his final season as a pro.”

The transfer itself was easier said than done and a few times during the winter, the move seemed dead in the water. “We respected the process with INEOS. There was nothing untoward of what we were doing. It was amicable, they handled all that on their side,” Ryder recalls. “It was on and off, on and off, and we respected that process. We were going to continue anyway if the deal didn’t happen and focus on what we are building here. Of course, we all knew it was a game-changer. It shows how crazy the world of cycling is. Sometimes good things happen to good people.”

And despite having a reputation of something of a diva, Ryder insists Pidcock has been easy to keep happy so far. “He was pretty easy in terms of that. There were no demands. When you bring a massive rider like that at the prime of his career to see how far he can go in this sport, he was really light in his demands and his entourage to bring with him," he concludes. “I’ve had riders in the past who’ve insisted on more entourage than Tom ever did. He believed in the beginning that we would build this together and that it’s a journey, and not come in and do a rip and replace.”