Tom Pidcock explains why he has no fixed result targets for Tour de France return

The 26-year-old is preparing for his fourth Tour de France with an altitude camp in Sierra Nevada with his Pinarello-Q36.5 team. It marks another chapter in a career that has already brought two Olympic mountain bike titles, world titles across three disciplines and a famous Tour stage win on Alpe d’Huez.

Pidcock’s relationship with the Tour, however, has not always been straightforward. He has ridden the race three times so far and knows how demanding it can be when things are not going well. Speaking on Frodeno’s Going Mental podcast, he described it as the biggest stage in cycling, but also one of the most unforgiving environments in the sport.

“The Tour is such an intense place,” Pidcock said. “The spotlight and the media pressure and the questions. You feel good and then maybe you do rubbish, or you feel really bad and people are asking if you are one of the favourites for the day.

“If it is not going well, it is miserable. It is not a nice place. But it is the biggest race in the world. It is the coolest race in the world. It is the race I grew up watching. When it goes well, there is not a better place to perform.”

This time, Pidcock wants to keep things simple. He insisted that he rides better when he has the freedom to enjoy himself rather than the pressure to perform.

“This year I’m not going with any expectations,” he said. “I want to race, and I want to have fun, and the rest will come. If I’m not saying, ‘Okay, I want to win a stage, I want to podium, I want to be top five,’ or whatever it is, then there is nothing to fail at.

“I have to enjoy to perform. I’m not the person who can perform off anger.”

That thinking seemed to inform his move away from Ineos, one of the biggest teams in cycling, and into a smaller project where he feels more involved. Pidcock said he now feels surrounded by people who believe in him and are building something together.

“Everyone around me believes in me, supports me,” he said. “We’re all in this mission together, in a mission to just be as good as we can be.

“It makes every little success a success, whereas in another team it would just be expected. Creating a story, basically, is what I’m trying to say. It’s not just about the performance and the winning.”

Pidcock placed third at last year’s Vuelta a España, and the display seems to have shifted his view of what he can achieve at a Grand Tour. He admitted that staying mentally switched on for three weeks has not always come naturally, particularly for a rider whose career has often been built around one day targets and multiple disciplines.

“To be that focused for three weeks is not a simple thing to do. Especially for someone like me. I like having stimulus all the time. I like being excited,” said Pidcock, who acknowledged that the Vuelta showed him was possible.

“It was massive for me,” he said. “It was not my biggest achievement on paper, but if you actually looked at it objectively, for me, that I concentrated and I was there for three weeks was a massive thing.”

That focus will be tested again from 4 July, when the Tour de France begins in Barcelona with a 19.7km team time trial. For Pidcock, it will be another three-week test, but this time with a different mindset.