Despite just nine seconds separating Tom Pidcock from the Tour de France podium after stage 13, rival teams professed that they were not worried by his rise.
After infiltrating the day’s break, the Pinarello Q36.5 rider ended up gaining 7:34 on his general classification rivals, which moved him up to fourth. He’s now seven seconds ahead of Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), 20 seconds ahead of Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM), 29 seconds ahead of Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), and seven seconds behind Remco Evenepoel (also Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).
Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) remains far ahead in the lead, obviously, and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) is over 30 seconds ahead, but the GC has been shaken up. It could be enough to make other riders and teams uncomfortable.
However, sports directors at both Red Bull and Lidl-Trek remained confident that giving up so much time to Pidcock, who finished third at the Vuelta a España last year, would not hurt their chances overall.
Asked if he was concerned, Red Bull’s Patxi Villa said: “Not really. I mean, the effort of today will come tomorrow… What he did today was a move, you have to measure a bit what you do now. I believe that was a super ride, but I think there will be a cost, a bill will come. Not tomorrow, then sometime.”
Steven de Jongh, DS at Lidl-Trek, concurred. “That’s not too worrying,” he said. “The gap we gave to Pidcock is just minimal. I’m not underestimating him, but I think he had a different run-up to the Tour than he had to the Vuelta. Of course, you cannot exclude him, but I’m happy where we are now. It’s a different picture, but for us it’s still good.”
The key, according to both, is that both stages 14 and 15, plus the time trial on stage 16, will prove who the real podium contenders are.
This weekend sees back-to-back mountain stages, with Saturday a battle in the Vosges, counting three category-one climbs, before the first hors catégorie summit finish of the race on Sunday, to the Plateau de Solaison. There follows the second rest day, after which there is a 26.1km individual time trial, potentially the weakest of Pidcock’s suits.
“Tomorrow is a master stage, so to keep the team good, we just pulled when we had to,” Villa explained. “When the gap goes a bit too much, it’s too much… being together it’s ok, but giving more time to a guy like Tom, that would not be comfortable. That’s why we pulled the last 4km of the climb to the finish line.
“It’s a risk you take, but we wanted to keep the team together and as comfortable as possible, and we entered into the action when it was getting critical. Tomorrow will be a big fight, one of the biggest of the Tour probably. We are facing here one of the key moments of Tour. Tomorrow will give a pretty clear idea.”
De Jongh agreed: “The next two days are super hard, then the rest day and the TT, and things will change. Tomorrow is super hard, it’s a full GC day, like Sunday is. It’s a very hard stage, we reconned it and it’s very hard.”
Pidcock’s rivals might feel calm about their chances of overcoming the Pinarello rider in the rest of the race, but it does still seem like a mistake to give him this time that they will still have to fight to take back. The Tour moves on, and in 24 hours the top 10 could be changed again, but for now, the Briton’s will feature more significantly in other teams’ morning briefings.
