2023-08-12 18:08:10
By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 3 minutes ago, Just updated
Tom Pidcock crowned in Scotland in the cross-country mountain bike event. MATTHEW CHILDS / REUTERS
The Briton from the Ineo team was the strongest in Glasgow this Saturday.
Road star Tom Pidcock of Britain became cross-country mountain bike world champion on Saturday in Scotland after already winning Olympic gold in Tokyo three years ago.
It is the first world title for Great Britain and the Ineos rider, winner at the top of Alpe d’Huez in the Tour de France 2022. It ends the streak of Swiss mountain bike legend Nino Schurter, who was aiming, at 37, for an eleventh planetary coronation but only finished third, behind New Zealander Sam Gaze, in silver. Frenchman Victor Koretzky finished just off the podium.
The race was marked by the fall and retirement on the first of eight laps of Mathieu van der Poel who failed to become the first rider to win three world championship titles in the same year, in cyclo-cross (in February), on the road (last Sunday in Glasgow) and by mountain bike.
«My front wheel came off. It’s my fault, the disappointment is more important than the physical damage, it takes away the euphoria of victory on the road“, he regretted.
This coup de theater also undoubtedly definitively annihilates his chances of participating in the Paris Olympic Games while an Olympic title is one of the major objectives of his career.
Tom Pidcock, 24, will be the favorite to defend his title in Paris after his demonstration on Saturday in the Glentress forest where he won alone.
At the finish, he kept a lead of 19 seconds over Gaze, 34 over Schurter and 43 over Koretzky.
Arriving at the foot of the podium last year in Les Gets, the Yorkshire rider, also cyclo-cross world champion in 2022, had saved himself for this meeting by skipping the road race.
He warmed up by taking third place on Thursday in the short-track, a non-Olympic discipline. Before flying over the debates on Saturday to bring the Ineos team the second title of the day after the coronation of the Frenchwoman Pauline Ferrand-Prévot in the women’s category.
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