PIDCOCK: THE POWER OF THREE

Tom Pidcock talks to James Shrubsall about taking his own pathway as he battles on three fronts

Tom Pidcock does things his way. If he was a junk food aficionado, his establishment of choice would definitely be BK (though he insists the worst it gets on this front is dark chocolate and digestives), while if he was a Rat Pack crooner, well… you know what song he’d sing. Thankfully for British bike fans, he’s neither of those things – instead, he’s one of the hottest young bike racing talents.

Few would argue that the 20-year-old Yorkshireman is not WorldTour material, despite his tender years.

And yet at Trinity Racing – a team essentially built around him and named after his management company – Pidcock isn’t even in a UCI team. However, also key in his set-up is his sponsorship deal with Red Bull, whose striking helmet livery you will inevitably see him racing in, whether on-road, cyclocross or MTB. Current titles on his palmarès include those of national champion in cross and also Under-23 MTB; he is also the current U23 Paris-Roubaix champ.

We are almost conditioned to seeing the fabled and extremely effective yellow brick road from GB track to GB road to the cycling Land of Oz that is the WorldTour, but Pidcock has made his own pathway. It’s almost as if he is dabbling a bit here, a bit there, trying to make up his mind as to which sporting arena he most fancies becoming a fulltime elite level world-beater in, and Red Bull facilitates that.

“Doing cool stuff is what their brand is all about, and doing three different disciplines is cool,” says Pidcock, on whom the marketing responsibilities that come with the elite level sport are certainly not lost. “I think also being a sportsman is about elite performance, and also being someone that’s marketable. And doing three different things, three different ways to market them I guess is three different opportunities.”