'Third is frustrating, but also a very positive day' - Pidcock misses stage win but surges to fourth overall at Tour

Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) finished third on stage 13 of the Tour de France, two seconds behind stage winner Mauro Schmid (Jayco AlUla) and Harald Tejada (XDS Astana) after a 57-rider breakaway stayed clear on the race's first day in the Vosges. 

More significantly, the move propelled Pidcock up to fourth overall, putting him within touching distance of the podium. 

Pinarello-Q36.5 had set their stall out early by getting Quinten Hermans, Xandro Meurisse and Fred Wright into the large breakaway, and the trio worked tirelessly throughout the stage for their team leader. 

"We thought, always from the start, that we'd try and get in the break if we could," Pidcock explained post-race. "Stay near the front, do the minimum. It was always going to be hard riding in the peloton at that speed anyway, so just try and stay a bit nearer the front."

"There was a split. Forty of us were in the front, with four of us there. It was the perfect situation."

The Pinarello-Q36.5 squad controlled much of the pace-setting in the breakaway into the foot and on the lower slopes of the final categorised climb of the stage, the Ballon d’Alsace, setting up Pidcock, who tried multiple attacks to break up the race. 

The group was reduced to 10 in size, thanks in large part to Pidcock's accelerations. From the summit, 30km remained in the stage, consisting of a descent and flatter run-in.

"The guys did an amazing job," Pidcock said. "I was thinking a lot about the stage, but the climb was not difficult enough to make the difference. Then we came to the finish with some guys, and it's really difficult to control it there by myself."

In the end, Schmid and Tejada managed to escape on the final run-in to Belfort, and the presence of Luke Plapp (Jayco AlUla) in the Pidcock group also made a chase difficult. The duo would contest the stage victory with Pidcock leading the chasing group home, having ultimately run out of road.

"Third is frustrating, but it was also a very positive day, so I'll take everything from that."

Wright, whose workload ended once the road began to rise significantly, admitted the team's ambitious plan to target the stage and also make gains in the GC had exceeded his expectations.

"I wasn't sure this morning if that ambition was maybe, maybe too greedy," Wright told TNT Sports. "So, yeah, to find ourselves in that situation with four of us in a big group, it couldn't have started any better, to be honest."

"I kind of couldn't believe how it all played out, really. It was just a case of keeping that group going and just riding as smooth, but as hard as we could till the climb started."

The British champion explained how it was his role to empty the tank on the approach to the crucial climbing section.

"With four of us, we kind of all started to sort of take it up before that climb," he said. "So it was my job to do the dead man's pull into the bottom of the first climb and then say, 'See you later.'"

The yellow jersey group finished 7:30 behind Pidcock in Belfort after the likes of Bahrain-Victorious, Lidl-Trek and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe all pushed the pace to keep Pidcock’s gap in check. In addition with the four bonus seconds for finishing third on the stage, Pidcock has risen from tenth to fourth in the overall standings. 

He sits 4:15 behind race leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), but just nine seconds behind Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) in third. 

With a demanding double mountain stage weekend to round out week 2 as well as a time trial early in week three, Pidcock is approaching the race day by day. 

"It's nice to be fourth," he said. "It'd be nice to say, 'Yeah, we can defend that,' but in the time trial I'll lose some minutes. And, yeah, I'm going to feel my legs tomorrow, that's for sure."