A Day With Team Pidcock

Vern Pitt joins Tom Pidcock’s family for an emotional and unforgettable day’s racing

- Vern Pitt

Patience,” that was the last thing Tom Pidcock’s coach, Kurt Bogaerts, said to him. That’s what his dad, Giles, tells CW as the U23 road race enters its closing stages and Pidcock sits in the wheels. There’s a waiting game out on the road but for the Pidcocks it’s been building since the Yorkshire course was unveiled a year ago. That’s why the inside of the tent we’re in by the finish line in Harrogate is a pressure cooker, the tension, palpable and unavoidable, has been rising all day.

Earlier, when we meet the Pidcocks, Giles, mum Sonja, little brother Joe, and Beth — Tom’s girlfriend — it’s easier to be breezy. The race hasn’t started yet. Watching the junior women’s race in their lounge, it’s clear this is a bike racing family. The conversation flits from one rider’s saddle height to another’s tactical decisions, to another’s impressive leanness. They’ve been doing this for a long time. Giles raced in France in his youth and he and Sonja have both run the Otley Cycle Races. There are also the many years ferrying Tom and Joe to races around the country and beyond. Beth asks what the piece I’m doing is and I explain, somewhat clumsily. “It’s like the cycling version of the Kardashians,” says Sonja with a laugh. “Or more likely the Osbournes,” Giles chimes in.

As we drive to the start I ask if anyone has heard from Tom this morning. Sonja tells me she always sends him the same message before a big race: “Be fast and have fun.” Beth has heard from him, he has had three poos this morning — a good sign, apparently.