'A hard time of the year' - Pidcock puts pre-Tour illness behind him with Andorra win

The Briton had been scheduled to race the Tour de Suisse this week, but his Pinarello-Q36.5 squad withdrew him from the race after he suffered a viral infection during a recent training camp at Sierra Nevada.

Pidcock offered some reassurance about his Tour form with his performance in Andorra, where he had too much for Carlos Verona (Lidl-Trek) and Sepp Kuss (Visma Lease a Bike) in the final kilometre of the stiff Coll de la Bottella.

“I had some difficult weeks but it’s nice to be coming out the other side,” Pidcock said in his flash interview. “It’s always a hard time of year, we’ve been pushing it every bit, and it came back to bite us in terms of training. I needed to make the extra step, so it’s nice to that some of it’s working.”

Pidcock enjoyed a fine start to 2026, pushing Tadej Pogačar all the way to the Via Roma in a dramatic edition of Milan-Sanremo, but his spring campaign was interrupted by a serious crash at the Volta a Catalunya that left him with knee ligament damage.

Remarkably, Pidcock returned in time to win a stage of the Tour of the Alps in late April, and he also placed second at Eschborn-Frankfurt. Pidcock won the cross-country event at the Nové Mesto Mountain Bike World Cup in May, when he also took second at the short track. 

He later built towards the Tour with a training camp at Sierra Nevada, but illness saw him opt to miss a clash with Pogačar at the Tour de Suisse in favour of more training days. He will hope his victory in Andorra augurs well for his return to the Tour after a one-year absence.

Pidcock has insisted that he will ride the Tour without tying himself to a specific GC goal despite scoring his first Grand Tour podium finish at last season’s Vuelta a España.

“It was not an easy one, it was hard-fought, that’s for sure, but it’s nice to be able to get your hands in the air, as difficult as it was,” Pidcock said of his Andorra win, adding praise for his team, with Chris Harper especially impressive.

“Everyone was super strong today, everyone committed 100%. To finish it off for them is really nice. Thank you to them, they committed, they rode all day, everyone did their part, so it’s a nice feeling.”