'A leader in every sense of the word - How the Pidcock factor transformed Pinarello-Q36.5

Tom Pidcock confessed to some frustration that he had to wait until the final stage of the Ruta del Sol to pick up his first victory of the season. He had already made an impact with aggressive showings at the Vuelta a Murcia and the Clásica de Jaén, but one of cycling’s great entertainers is always mindful of the bottom line: this is a results business.

Indeed, Pidcock’s post-stage comments included a mild admonishment of both himself and his Pinarello-Q36.5 team for opting to race the Ruta del Sol at all, given that the route wasn’t quite as difficult as they had believed beforehand. February may be a month to lay foundations for the year ahead, but Pidcock wasn’t in Spain simply to ride around and bank racing miles in the sun. Every bike race has a winner and, wherever possible, Pidcock tends to believe that winner should be him.

“Tom is a leader in every sense of the word,” Pinarello-Q36.5 manager Doug Ryder tells Domestique, citing an example from his recent altitude camp in Chile. “They had nothing else to do every evening other than talk to each other and build relationships among the group of riders that were there, so they wound up playing poker and card games, and every time Tom would still win. I mean, for goodness’ sake, the guy cannot just lose at anything. He’s so competitive.”

Those competitive instincts were a large part of what made Pidcock such an appealing proposition to Ryder when he signed him in the winter of 2024, but after the unhappy ending to his time at Ineos, he was a rider with a reputation as an individualist rather than a leader.

That perception, accurate or not, was propagated by the editorial choices of the Netflix Tour de France documentary, and when Pidcock dropped out of the WorldTour to sign for Q36.5, it wasn’t entirely unfair to wonder if the Briton wanted to lead a team or if he simply wanted the freedom to do his own thing. The answer, Ryder insists, was evident from the moment he and long-term coach Kurt Bogaerts linked up with the squad. 

“Tom has improved our whole organisation,” Ryder says. “With Q36.5, with Pinarello, with all our partners, he pushes them to the limits to out-innovate the competition, but as soon as the product is developed, he makes sure that it goes to every single rider on the team, because Tom knows that his success is only if all 30 riders on the team benefit from it. I see that very rarely in leaders in sport and in cycling, but he sees himself as being responsible for taking a leadership role to support the bigger quantum of the team.”

For the first two years of their existence, Q36.5 had already looked the part in terms of equipment, staff and infrastructure, but there seemed to be a cap on their ambition. They notched up a dozen wins in 2023 and 2024, but they didn’t secure a Grand Tour invitation in either season. A catalyst for bigger things was sorely needed. Enter Pidcock.

“Even though the legacy of our team was sound and based on solid principles, and even though we had strong backing and good partners, people were uncertain because we were a new team, so it was a challenge,” Ryder says.

“Attracting a rider like Tom Pidcock to our team was an absolute gift, because he took a calculated risk to come to us. Obviously, we had been a WorldTour team [as Qhubeka], but it was still a risk, and he took a decision that would be decisive for his career.”

The Pidcock factor has changed the dimensions of the team, as testified by a busy transfer campaign. The ten new arrivals include Thomas Gloag, Fred Wright, Quinten Hermans, Sam Bennett and Eddie Dunbar, who will lead the squad at the Giro d’Italia in May.

“Gone are the days where we have to knock on doors,” Ryder says. “Now there are lots of riders contacting us to see if there’s an opportunity with us, which is nice.”

In an era when the biggest budget teams in cycling seem to be stockpiling the biggest talents in the sport, Pidcock’s surprise move for the 2025 season was something of a throwback to an age when entire squads orbited the gravitational pull of their biggest star. Part of the appeal of swapping Ineos for Ryder’s squad, it seems, was to work with a more compact organisation. The loose cannon at Ineos certainly appears more comfortable as the big gun at Pinarello-Q36.5.

“I think he couldn’t do that in other teams,” Ryder says. “He didn’t have that kind of freedom and trust, and those two things are important for Tom.  On this team, he’s been able to exercise that freedom and that responsibility that we’ve given him, and he’s embraced it wholeheartedly.”

Pidcock’s debut season with Q36.5 was a case in point. The opening phase of the year was spent racing early and often as he was responsible for picking up the results that would rubberstamp the team’s first invitation to a Grand Tour. He fell short at the Giro d’Italia after accomplishing that mission, but he would recalibrate for the Vuelta a España, where he secured a breakthrough podium finish.

“It was a difficult season to plan, and I think his GC at the Giro was probably compromised by having to race so much in the early part of the season to get a wildcard,” Ryder says. “But then at the Vuelta, he’s obviously shown that he is a three-week rider when he puts his mind to it.”

Pidcock’s planning for 2026 has been facilitated by last year’s successful campaign, with Pinarello-Q36.5 picking up automatic invitations to all WorldTour races by virtue of their place in the UCI standings. 

When the team was established ahead of the 2023 season, Ryder’s avowed aim was to bring his new team to WorldTour level by the end of the next three-year promotion/relegation cycle. That didn’t quite materialise for 2026, but they can at least take advantage of a systemic quirk that worked for squads like Alpecin and Uno-X in cycles past.

As ever, Pidcock will have a busy spring, riding on the cobbles at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad this weekend and the gravel of Strade Bianche the following week before turning his attention to building towards the Ardennes by way of Milan-San Remo. A return to the Tour de France in July, meanwhile, will be the centrepiece of his campaign. After Pidcock’s Vuelta podium, the assumption is that he will target the GC, but nothing, it seems, is off the table.

“The Tour is the Tour, so if he can take chances early and win a stage, then he will do that,” Ryder says. “What I love about Tom is that the one thing he doesn’t ever want to hear in a team briefing is ‘Our objective is to not lose time.’ Tom wants us to race, and if you look at the Vuelta, we raced every single day. 

“For the Tour, the GC aspiration is in the plan, of course, but it’s not the sole focus. Tom likes to win, and we saw that in the Vuelta. If there’s a stage that suits him, he’s going to go for it. And, of course, if he survives and can still do a really good GC then, of course, he’ll go for that.

“At the Vuelta, we said top 10 was a goal and top five was the dream, and we ended up on the podium which just blew out all our minds. So for the Tour, let’s see what happens. We’ll take our chances where we can.”

That said, Pidcock’s Vuelta podium didn’t drop out of the ether. While there had been doubts about his commitment to the idea of chasing Grand Tour success during his time at Ineos, he made clear that it was a firm objective when he entered into talks with Q36.5. And it makes him one of the most compelling storylines of the 2026 season.

“No, it was a real aspiration because when we first met Tom and had a conversation with him,” Ryder says. “We asked him: ‘What is the dream situation and scenario for you? What do you want to try and achieve?’ And his answer was that he wanted to see if he could be a Grand Tour rider because people had told him that he couldn’t. And the worst thing you can do with Tom is to say, ‘I don’t think you can do that,’ because that’s like putting a red flag in front of a bull.”