Tom Pidcock wants more than a breakaway win in Alpe d'Huez - "I didn’t win from the best riders in the world"

Tom Pidcock had another very interesting season, winning the Alpe d'Huez stage and having a good overall performance at the Tour de France. Despite also becoming cyclocross World champion and mountain bike European champion, Pidcock wanted more.

“Yeah, Alpe d’Huez was the highlight this year of course, but there were too many other things that went wrong.I got pretty ill at one point, so I had two good parts of the year really and it could have gone much better”, said Pidcock in a interview for Cycling Weekly.

The British talent felt more satisfied with 2021 year achievements than in this one “I had some good results this year, but last year was much better. It was my first year as a pro, I won Brabantse and Amstel,”

Indeed Pidcock, 2021 classics campaign was more successful than this one, he achieved not only the aforementioned Brabantse and Amstel wins but also a 5th place in Strade Bianche and a 6th in Fleche Wallone being always very active on the classics he went.

His illness and injuries clearly had an impact on his more modest classics campaign in this season where his best result was a 3rd in Dwars door Vlaanderen.

"For me to be at my absolute best, I need a smooth run into a race with good results beforehand that give me confidence, with good training and buildup” told Pidcock explaining that his illness and injuries really affected his confidence for this part of the season, specially when he was forced to miss Strade Bianche and abandon Milano-San Remo.

Still, despite the Ineos rider referring his Alpe d'Huez stage win has just a "nice stepping stone" because," I won from a breakaway. I didn’t win from the best riders in the world”, the fact is that this great win puts him with cycling legends like Marco Pantani, Bernard Hinault and Fausto Coppi who had won there.

This confirms the expectations about one day seeing Pidcock battling or even winning a race like Tour de France, tough not without some sacrifices.

"In some ways you would need to sacrifice the classics, you couldn’t do them all. I think this year Tadej did more classics than he’s ever done before and he didn’t win the Tour, which may or may not be related. The thing with racing at the Tour now is that it’s just full gas, all the time. When you’re going up the long climbs and you’re at threshold, and then you’re attacking each other it’s just so explosive. It’s really like nothing else” he said.

His dreams and ambitions are well known but has he said some sacrifices have to be made and his classics and cyclocross campaigns will probably need to have less focus by him. With the good notes he showed at 2022 Tour they can be worthy to take.