Fate deals a bad hand but ice-cool winner comes up trumps

Pidcock’s patience, wits, pure speed and an astonishing burst of audacity deliver him avictory against the odds

- Jonathan Liew

Shortly before 4.30pm Paris time, as the last notes of God Save the King were dying away, a mechanic called Rune Kristensen was wheeling the most prized artefact in British cycling back to its truck.

The Pinarello bike ridden by Tom Pidcock to Olympic gold was still coated in a fine layer of warm dust, the No 1 mounted on its front, its gears still on the same setting. On the stem, in red, white and blue, was emblazoned Pidcock's personal motto: "Play your cards right."

This is a sport where the odds can swivel in an instant, where nothing is ever won and so no cause is ever truly lost. Pidcock, a rider who has made a career out of doing the undoable, knows that better than most. Here he was dealt the most unpromising of hands, and against a hostile home crowd and a flat tyre, he cleaned out the house.

It was a ride of pure, thrilling instinct: a welcome reminder that in the chaos of competitive cross-country biking, sometimes the best plan is no plan at all.

And Pidcock, who has won on the snow-flecked peaks of Alpe d'Huez and the dandruff-white roads of Strade Bianche and now the verdant woodland of Paris, is in many ways a cyclist of the romantic imagination, of a time before strategies and specialisation and four-year plans, when the essence of the sport was simply to get on your bike and thrash it.