"It's actually quite boring" - Tom Pidcock not too excited for Olympic MTB course in Paris

Tom Pidcock is the reigning Mountain Bike Olympic champion and in Paris he will try to replicate it. The Briton has this as his main goal for the week, he will also race the road race event in Paris but will not be among the big favourites as is the case here. Off-road, the Briton is also the reigning World Champion in the XCO discipline and comes off a string of victories that give him a favourite status.

Pidcock has not raced too much MTB this year but when he has, he succeeded. In May he raced Nové Mesto, finishing 7th in the Short Track event and then winning the XCO race... And only one week before the Tour de France he won both events at the Crans-Montana World Cup. At this time it already looked as if he would be putting in more focus onto the Olympics than initially thought, as throughout most of the year he had claimed to be aiming for a GC result at the Tour de France. Ultimately he did not follow through, logically, but also had to abandon the race.

This did however allow him to put a bit of extra focus on the mountain bike and this upcoming race. But his thoughts on the course - which he had explored last year in the test event - is not the brightest: "It's actually quite boring, there's only gravel. They could have built a more challenging course. It's not the best course in the world, but it's the same for everyone," Pidcock said in words to CyclingWeekly.

In Paris there are no mountains but there is also the lack of a course that is similar to what the World Cup regularly features. A race in mostly gravel tracks will be significantly faster and less technical, which is not too much to his liking. "We love mountain biking for the reasons that make us enjoy it for what it is. Those are the courses you're allowed to ride, the places you're allowed to go. If you're just riding over a nice hill, it's not really mountain biking," he concluded.