Sick, weak, and now battered like a boxer, but Pidcock is back: "I can't pretend it doesn't bother me"

There is a buzz of activity around the colossal INEOS bus, where Pidcock had already poked his head out a few times for some autographs and photos. A little later, he appears before the press with a RedBull cap, a plaster on his nose, and a black eye, as if he's just taken on an Iberian brown bear. What happened, Tom? "I'll leave that to your imagination, it's not interesting," he responds with a grin.

Alright, then the question on everyone's lips: how is the Brit doing after he prematurely ended his Belgian campaign. "I'm doing well. I'm healthy again and I feel fit on the bike, which is also what I have been focusing on lately. The time around Christmas was strange. After the training camp, I was a bit sick, but ultimately I never felt like the best version of myself. So, we took some time off, which helped. It's nice here in the sun. I'm not in top form, but still, I wanted to race here. The audience here is great and I'm really looking forward to it, even though I've only touched my cyclo-cross bike once."

"It was frustrating to have to say goodbye to cyclo-cross earlier, but I would also have liked to have been more at the front," says Pidcock. "But on the other hand, I was relieved: I was fighting a battle I couldn't win. Between races, I couldn't produce any power. We were doing motopacing training, and normally I go fifty or sixty kilometers per hour, but now I could only manage forty kilometers per hour. I wasn't sick, just weak."

The INEOS Grenadiers rider expects a lot of competition. "Everyone is here at the last training camp before the World Championships, so they will be in good form. Mathieu van der Poel has been on another level so far, just a league of his own. He is very impressive, there's not much else I can say about that."

What does he take from this disappointing winter into the coming months and years? "I've learned that I don't enjoy just participating, because I want to be competitive. I can't pretend it doesn't bother me, that's not possible," he concludes honestly.

Pidcock also looked ahead to the road season. "I start in the Tour of Algarve, and my program will largely be the same as last year. I'll begin in the Omloop, then the Italian races, but I'll do the Tour of the Basque Country instead of the cobbled classics. Then, I'll focus on the Tour de France and the Olympics, featuring both the road race and mountain biking on my schedule."

"That's going to be tough, but I have no other choice," concludes Pidcock, who might also encounter Van der Poel in the discipline. "That's a different story than in cyclo-cross, because it's a different discipline. He hasn't really raced on the mountain bike for a few years, so he's an unknown factor, I would say."

The versatile rider himself still thoroughly enjoys the discipline. "I really enjoy it, and it's easier to do it without stress. That's different from cyclo-cross, where I really can't just come in tenth. That's also the reason I'm not doing the World Championships. If you go there, you have to go full throttle. My goal was to win the World Championships one day, which I have now done. If I return, it's only because I want to," states Pidcock.