Not just Liège: Why Tour of the Alps is key to Tom Pidcock's Tour de France build-up

Even after winning stage 3 of the Tour of the Alps in Arco, Tom Pidcock struck a cautious note about his prospects at Liège-Bastogne-Liège this weekend. He was, after all, still only two days removed from what he had called his “worst ever” day on the bike, and Wednesday’s victory had come after he had been distanced on the Passo Castrin early in the stage.

“I think it will be difficult,” Pidcock told reporters in the press room afterwards, suggesting that his likely aim was to score UCI points for his Pinarello-Q36.5 team rather than vie for victory against Tadej Pogačar, Paul Seixas et al barely a month after suffering knee ligament damage in his crash at the Volta a Catalunya.

The thought was echoed by Pidcock’s long-term coach Kurt Bogaerts when he spoke to Domestique on Thursday. When Pidcock made a surprise return to action at the Tour of the Alps this week, the initial assumption was that he was lining up in a bid to trash his way back into something like winning shape ahead of Liège-Bastogne-Liège. 

In truth, Pidcock’s presence here is less about the Ardennes than the Tour de France. For Bogaerts, the almost three-month gap between the Volta a Catalunya and the Tour de Suisse was too long to countenance as he builds towards July.

“Liège is a completely different level of race in terms of its hardness and length, so for sure we don’t have things in our own hands anymore,” Bogaerts told Domestique of Pidcock’s Liège chances.

“What was more important was not to have a long gap between Catalunya and the Tour de Suisse, so I think it is already a success that we were able to be on the start line here, and we’ll try to get through this race. 

“We also have the intention, if everything works out, to start in Liège, but I don’t think you can have not huge expectations. But the positive thing is that he’s improving on a daily basis, and his feelings on the bike are better every day too. But at the same time, he was one of the last guys who made that front group of fifty or sixty riders yesterday…”

Pidcock suffered a horrific crash on stage 5 of the Volta a Catalunya, riding off the road and into a ravine on the descent of Collada Sobirana. The anterolateral ligament damage suffered there interrupted most promising Spring campaign that had seen him win Milano-Torino and push Tadej Pogacar close at Milan-Sanremo.

Pinarello-Q36.5 quickly prepared a contingency plan for tackling the Ardennes Classics without Pidcock, but it was striking that the team never set any timeframe for his return to competition. The best approach, Bogaerts maintained, was to wait and see.

“I never like to set a date for return, because if you set a date for return, you make errors,” he said. “The thing that I want to avoid is setbacks, because then rehab takes longer. I prefer not to say anything because it’s always unpredictable how an athlete will respond. 

“Tom proved many times in the past that he always has a big hunger to return, but you also need to make sure you don’t make errors that can affect his career.  And with a knee injury of that level, I like to be careful, even if, of course, you want to be back as soon as possible. It’s about finding the sweet spot without making errors, and that’s not easy.”

Pidcock was ultimately off the bike for a week and a half, but he maintained that even that relatively short interruption had blunted his sharpness considerably. 

“He was 11 days, I think, not doing anything, not even running or walking, and I don’t think Tom has ever done that,” Bogaerts said. “Even in the off-season, he goes for a run or even goes for a gravel ride or for a mountain bike ride. So really doing nothing, that’s something different for Tom.”

And that principle will hold through in his build-up to the Tour de France. After his post-Catalunya lay-off, Pidcock will take a shorter than initially planned break after Liège-Bastogne-Liège. A hefty chunk of time in May and June will be dedicated to altitude training, but, unlike his GC rivals at the Tour, Pidcock is likely to add a little extra-curricular activity to his schedule at the mountain bike World Cup in Nove Mesto on May 24.

“The break after Liège isn’t going to be so long as we would have expected without the crash, it’s going to be only a few days,” Bogaerts said. “He’ll do some easier rides by feel, just to stay mentally fresh, and then it’s likely we’ll try to do the World Cup in Nove Mesto. He’ll do some altitude and then the Tour de Suisse before the Tour.”