Tom Pidcock left empty after brutal Tour stage in the heat: 'It was like a war zone'

The British rider had been tipped as one of the contenders for the uphill finish in Les Angles, but when the race came back together and the favourites began to make their moves, Pidcock was unable to respond as he had hoped. He eventually finished 16th, 18 seconds behind winner Tadej Pogačar.

Speaking afterwards, he pointed less to tactics and more to the conditions, which turned the stage into a battle of survival.

“The big moral of the story is how bloody hot it was all day,” Pidcock told Cyclism'Actu. “I don’t think I’ve done such a hard race in such heat before. It was ridiculous.”

With temperatures rising sharply during the stage, reaching as high as 39°C, the peloton spent much of the day fighting not only the road, but also the weather. Pidcock described a frantic scene as riders tried to stay cool and hydrated.

“It was like a war zone, everyone trying to get bottles,” he said. “I think we went through about 10,000 bidons today in the peloton.”

Pidcock had animated the race the previous day in Barcelona with his Pinarello-Q36.5 team, but this time they remained more cautious as UAE Emirates-XRG took responsibility at the front. That decision raised eyebrows, including from Jonas Vingegaard, with the team choosing to dictate another demanding stage so early in the Tour.

Pidcock was not surprised.

“They obviously took so much confidence from yesterday that they felt they could do that,” he said. “And they can. They’re the only team who could control a day like today. They did it for a reason, and it worked.”

For Pidcock, though, the final climb came after too much damage had already been done. The heat had drained him before the race reached its decisive moments.

“I just didn’t have anything in the final,” he admitted. “I was a bit cooked. So, yeah, that was it.”