“We have earned our place at the Tour de France” – Tom Pidcock says Q36.5 help him ‘carry the baggage’ of his INEOS past

Tom Pidcock has not talked about the Tour de France like this before. Not because the race is new to him, but because the context is.

Q36.5 are heading to cycling’s biggest stage on merit, off the back of what they did in 2025. For a team outside the WorldTour, that is the difference between being invited and being entitled. And for Pidcock, it is the difference between arriving at the Tour as a rider within a long-established structure and arriving as the rider whose results helped put the team there in the first place.

In a Q36.5 team statement, Pidcock put it plainly: “We have earned our place, the team, through our performances last year, that’s given us the right to go there, and no one can take that away from us.”

That line matters because it speaks directly to why this Tour feels different. It is not a lucky break. It is not a selection debate. It is the product of a full season of scoring and winning, capped by Pidcock’s breakthrough third place overall at the Vuelta a Espana.

Pidcock will make his fourth Tour appearance this summer. The headline memory remains his 2022 stage win on Alpe d’Huez, plus time in the white jersey and a spell in the top 10 overall. But his Tour years at INEOS Grenadiers also came with scrutiny and noise, including the public distraction around Steve Cummings being kept away from the race in 2024.

That is why one of the most revealing moments in his statement is not about the route, or results, or targets. It is about what the Tour does to a rider.

“I’ve had ups and downs in the Tour de France the last years, so it’s nice now, with this new team, to earn our own place there,” he said. “It’s the biggest stage we have to race on. With that comes so much baggage, but I think in this tea,m they help me carry it all.”

It is hard to miss what he is pointing to. The Tour amplifies everything: expectation, attention, pressure, history. Pidcock is saying the environment around him has changed, and that Q36.5 is built to support him through the weight that comes with the sport’s biggest race.

There is another thread running through Pidcock’s words, and it ties back to what 2025 represented for him personally. His first season after leaving INEOS was meant to be a reset. Instead, it became proof that he could lead, win, and then carry form into a three week Grand Tour.

That is the context behind his main personal objective for the Tour. “I think personally, my biggest objective is to go there, enjoy the suffering, enjoy the intensity of the race, the media with the racing,” he said. “I think if we can enjoy it and enjoy the suffering as a team, then the results will come from that.”

He is not promising a specific outcome. He is describing an approach, and it sounds like the approach of a rider who wants to arrive mentally unburdened and physically ready, rather than trapped by what the Tour has meant to him in the past.

Pidcock knows exactly what the Tour represents for Q36.5, too. “The Tour de France is the biggest race in the world, the biggest bike race in the world,” he said. “So yeah, to be able to go there and to try and perform the best you can is an honour.”

This year’s route includes two stages finishing on Alpe d’Huez, the climb that delivered the defining road win of his career in 2022. It is the sort of detail that naturally adds pressure, because fans and media will attach nostalgia and expectation to it. Pidcock, though, is framing the moment as a team milestone as much as a personal return.

The telling part is that he is not talking like someone hoping to be included. He is talking like someone who believes the team has earned the right to belong.

And that is the real shift. The Tour is still the Tour. The difference is how Pidcock and Q36.5 are arriving there.