OPINION | Tom Pidcock's disappointing Giro makes Equipo Kern Pharma's Vuelta snub more painful

In my opinion, one of the most unfair decisions of recent years in the world of cycling has to do with the Vuelta a España and Equipo Kern Pharma. Why? Because Javier Guillén and his team decided not to invite the team to the Vuelta this year, and instead granted the wildcard slot to Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team.

Until recently, Q36.5 was a fairly unknown team team like Caja Rural, but with the arrival of Tom Pidcock they have added super star status.

But, invitations should not be given away. I'm not saying that a team deserves to go to a grand tour simply because they are from the country. I would have perfectly understood if they were left out because of the (also unfair) rotating system that this year took Caja Rural and Burgos to the race. As I say, wildcards shouldn't be given away. But in this case all the requirements are met:

What makes it worse is that Tom Pidcock hardly set the world on fire during this Giro. Yes, he may have been denied a chance of victory on stage 9 because of a crash, but he did not feature very much at the sharp end of the race.

To me, Pidcock is an extremely talented cyclist who wants to cover too much and in the end often covers nothing (his performance in the last 2 Tour de France with INEOS attests to this). We have not seen him fight for stages and we have not seen him in the overall despite the fact that the level was not extraordinary at the recent Giro.

He scraped a fifth place in Tirana (stage 1), a third in Matera (5) and a fourth in Castelnovo ne'Monti (11). He finished 16th overall, 44 minutes behind Simon Yates. I'm not saying that in the Vuelta (if he rides it) he won't be more impressive, but to gamble on this to leave out Kern Pharma seems very unfair to me.