"It's not the end of the world" - Tom Pidcock hopes to be competitive at Tour of Flanders following return to racing

Tom Pidcock returned to competition at Dwars door Vlaanderen. It was a last-minute attempt to get some race rhythm in time for the Tour of Flandres. He's talked about his performance, last few weeks and ambitions.

"I turned it off with 30k to go. It's been good to watch as a fan, but it's exciting to get back into racing now," Pidcock said following the race. "I think it would have been a different race with me and Filippo there in the final but it is what it is."

The British team didn't have much luck either yesterday in Belgium, but the outcome for Pidcock was not negative, specially since returning from a concussion suffered at Tirreno-Adriatico. "I've had two bad concussions before. This one was not so bad, I knew it wasn't so serious, but you have to be careful and take it easy. I think when I hit my head, it was good timing that it was after a hard Tirreno because I had five days easy, so maybe it's not the end of the world," he commented.

His goal is very clear: the Tour of Flanders where he hopes to fight for a good result. "The goal is to be the best I can be on Sunday, and today is a good preparation for that. I hope [the layoff] didn't make too much of an impact. I did some good work last week in Andorra, so I think I'll be OK."

It won't be easy however, as the likes of Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar have been proving their form quite convincingly lately and will be hard to match. "...That's where I see myself. Of course, I'll have to get past the point where they have the raw power and get into the more attritional part of the race. I think that's the important bit," he concluded.