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Tom Pidcock became mountain-bike world champion on 30 August. Less than a month later, the British rider will have the chance to become world champion again, this time on the road. The 27-year-old from Yorkshire is heading to the UCI Road World Championships in Montréal, Canada, where the elite men’s road race takes place on 27 September.
Pidcock arrives in Montréal in impressive form. After winning the mountain-bike cross-country world title in Italy on 30 August, he swapped his mountain bike for a road bike and won the GP Industria & Artigianato just one week later. He then finished fourth at the Grand Prix de Québec on 11 September, competing against some of the riders he could face again at the World Championships.
The World Championship road race will cover 273.7 km around Montréal and includes around 3,800 metres of climbing. The demanding, hilly course could play to Pidcock’s strengths, particularly given his experience in mountain biking and cyclo-cross, where climbing, bike handling and repeated changes of pace are a major part of racing.
That ability to move between disciplines is what makes Pidcock unusual even among professional cyclists. He has competed at the highest level in road cycling, mountain biking and cyclo-cross, becoming a multiple mountain-bike world champion, a cyclo-cross world champion and a two-time Olympic mountain-bike champion. Few riders build careers across so many different disciplines at the same time.
One major prize, however, is still missing from his collection: the elite road world championship. Winning in Montréal would give Pidcock the right to wear cycling’s famous rainbow jersey in road races for the following year, and he has previously described winning the road rainbow jersey as one of the biggest remaining ambitions of his career.
It would also complete an extraordinary few weeks. In less than a month, Pidcock could go from winning a mountain-bike world title to challenging the world’s best road cyclists for another rainbow jersey on a completely different type of bike.
On 27 September, Britain has another world title to cheer for. Pidcock has already shown what he can do on a mountain bike, and Montréal gives him the opportunity to chase one of the biggest titles still missing from his career.
How impressive is it for one athlete to compete at world-class level across several different cycling disciplines, and could we see more athletes specialising less in the future?
