"I just had to go for a gap. Rubbing is racing" - Tom Pidcock defies puncture to retain Olympic mountain bike gold with comeback for the ages

Tom Pidcock is a two time Olympic gold medallist After a thrilling men's mountain bike race on Monday afternoon, the Brit successfully defended his gold from Tokyo three years ago despite a mid-race puncture seeing him drop nearly 40 seconds off the pace.

"I think this week, so many things go through your head," the multi discipline INEOS Grenadiers star reflected in his post-race interview. "By the time you get on the start line you’re pretty knackered as it is. It was all going pretty well and I knew Victor Koretzky would be strong here, I knew it would not be easy today. "

As mentioned, 'not easy' proved something of an understatement as despite powering into an early lead alongside his French rival, an untimely puncture threatened to end Pidcock's Olympic dreams in the cruellest of circumstances. "The puncture happened, Bruno wasn’t ready in the pits, but it was a fast change," he recalls of the heart in mouth moment. "I knew I had five laps, that’s almost fifty minutes. Anything is possible."

Having done all the hard work to get back to the front though, Koretzky refused to give up the gold without a fight and in a thrilling final lap, the momentum swung this way and that as both riders attempted to break free of the other. "I was coming fast back to Victor, but I couldn’t get rid of him," Pidcock admits. "I knew how fast he was on the last lap."

In the end, it took a daredevil, last gasp move up the inside from the Brit on the final corner to finally break free of his rival and secure his second Olympic title, despite the chorus of boos from the disgruntled French crowd in Paris. "In the end I just had to go for a gap. Rubbing’s racing, that’s what I’ve always done. The Olympics is no different," Pidcock concludes. "I’m sorry for him, the support for him is incredible, but it’s the Olympics, you’ve got to go all in."