Updated May 25, 2026 07:12AM
He made his name in part for his MTB ability and while Tom Pidcock is very much targeting this year’s Tour de France, he found time to return to his off-road background and to seize an important win.
The British Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling rider competed in the Nové Město UCI Mountain Bike World Series in the Czech Republic Sunday, and raced to his fifth career victory. He won the Elite XCO round there, beating the Frenchman Luca Martin by 18 seconds.
The race came three weeks after his runner-up slot in Eschborn-Frankfurt and several weeks before a scheduled start in the Tour de Suisse.
His verdict?
He’s going well, but feeling a lack of competition. And his rivals are also better than they used to be.
“My fitness is good, but when I haven’t done many races, I need to be a bit more cautious than perhaps in another part of the season,” he said.
“I think it shows everyone is pushing, everyone is getting better and stronger. The level of the sport keeps getting higher and higher. It keeps me on my toes because I can’t rest on my laurels. These guys are working just as hard.”
Pidcock also competed in the shorter XCC race in the same venue on Friday, where he was second to the Frenchman Mathis Azzaro.
Further MTB participation would likely see him open a bigger margin over his rivals, but with the Tour on the horizon, he’s got bigger considerations on his mind.
Besides, it’s been historically difficult to successfully mix disciplines, even for the biggest stars.
A rare breed: winners across multiple disciplines
Pidcock is one of only a few road pros to also excel in off-road racing. He’s a double Olympic XC champion, a past winner of the world champs and is also the current European champion.
He was also cyclocross world champion in 2022.
But jumping from discipline to discipline is hard, even if you are one of the most gifted riders in the world.
Pidcock is now 26 and while he won a Tour de France stage back in 2022, he is still to realise his full potential in the world’s biggest race. His best overall result so far? Thirteenth, back in 2023.
The crossover is not as straightforward as you think.
Peter Sagan famously failed to convert his stunning road form back to MTB success. A world champion on the mountain bike as a junior, he switched to road and won over 100 races. However he was unsuccessful in his bid to take a MTB world title, and also to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games.
Mathieu van der Poel has enjoyed considerably more crossover success than the Slovakian. He has won eight Monuments plus a world title on the road, and notched up a record eight cyclocross word titles plus a European championship MTB gold.
However he hasn’t reached anything like the same heights as Pidcock, in terms of MTB results. Van der Poel has long wanted to win the mountain bike worlds but was a lowly 29th in Crans-Montana last September.
It is clear that juggling multiple disciplines is very difficult, particularly when Van der Poel does a large number of cyclocross races in the winter and appears to run out of steam towards the end of the road season.
The best example of road/MTB success?
Thus far, Pauline Ferrand Prévot is probably the best example of a rider who has excelled at both MTB racing and road competition. Like Pidcock she won the Olympic XC title in Paris. She’s won five XC worlds, as well as two marathon and two short track. A road world champion back in 20214, her pivot to MTB racing was very fruitful, and so too her decision to refocus on road racing last year.
She pinpointed a win in the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift as a three year ambition; the Visma-Lease a Bike rider won it in year one.
Puck Pieterse is not quite as successful as Ferrand-Prévot but she has also proven very versatile. She won the women’s race in Nové Mesto at the weekend, took second in both Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège this spring and triumphed in World Cups in Hoogerheide and Maasmechelen before that.
As for road pro Lucinda Brand, she was the dominant women’s cyclocross rider this winter, winning 20 times including the worlds.
In contrast, Pidcock has been very restrained, taking a compete swerve around the cross scene last winter in order to focus on the road.
Misjudging the pacing
The spring has been a very good one for the Briton, the leader of the Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling team.
He won Milan-Torino and took stage victories in the Vuelta a Andalucia and the Tour of the Alps, and also landed that second pace in Eschborn-Frankfurt.
However a high speed crash put him over a barrier on a descent at the Volta a Catalunya, a hair-raising fall which put him out of racing for almost a month.
Competing in MTB racing is risky, but even with the Tour fast approaching, he decided the Nové Město race was too good to miss.
He ramped up the pressure on lap two and was alone for much of the XCO event.
“I used my strength on the climbs to make the difference and just ride my own race,” he said.
However his lack of MTB racing tested him, and he made a likely error in turning on the pace too soon.
“I think that was the hardest one I’ve done,” he said, referring to his five wins in Nové Město. “I didn’t make it easy for myself. I had a really good start and I was probably a bit too keen in the first laps.
“When Luca went in front, I knew that was a point where everyone was kind of showing themselves a little bit and I thought, I will test the water and see what happens. But it’s a long way. Luca was pushing me all the way. He kept coming close and I had to kick again a few times.”
Next up for the 26 year old?
His team confirmed Monday to Velo that he will next do a training camp and then ride the Tour de Suisse. He’ll be up against Tadej Pogačar there before taking on the four-time champion in a much bigger way at the Tour de France.