Almost one hour after Mathieu van der Poel won Paris-Roubaix yet again, Joey Pidcock entered the velodrome. He was the last man in, 21 minutes behind the previous rider, and already well out of the time cut, but the Brit was going to cross the line come what may. “People want to finish this more than most races,” the 23-year-old said. “I don’t think it was that hard mentally to finish – I just committed because I was going to do it. So many people don’t get the opportunity to ride here and to ride something like this. I might not get to ride it again so of course I have to finish. It didn’t matter how long it took – although I actually thought it would be dark before I got here.”
The brother and Q36.5 teammate of Tom, the younger Pidcock found himself alone in the Hell of the North for several hours, his day becoming complicated before the cobbles even began. “I almost got caught in three crashes in a row,” he said. “When Wout van Aert crashed, I think he touched me when he came down, and afterwards I said I wasn’t risking my life for this.”
So he didn’t – he embarked on a solo Roubaix, 30 sectors mostly alone, riding across cobblestones strewn with litter, bloodied by the cuts of countless riders, and alongside departing fans. “The Arenberg was still pretty cool, proper walls of noise,” he reflected. “There were still people [on other sectors] but everybody was already going home.”
“We’ve heard from him quite a bit and I’ve just spoken to him now,” his team manager Doug Ryder said, 10 minutes before he finally appeared in the velodrome. “He’s just saying that he wants to get through it but it’s hectic. He’s got the cobbled sectors all full of people walking so he’s going slower and slower because it’s just full of people. He just wants to experience every sector he’s so happy to be still riding.
Pidcock wasn’t even set to race Roubaix until a few days ago; he’s only started seven races all season, his first in the professional ranks. “He rode last year in the U23 race and he did really well and he enjoyed the race,” Ryder said. Pidcock finished 59th a year ago in the espoirs race, but was in the front group until a badly-timed mechanical. “He had a concussion in his last race [Trofeo Laigueglia in early March] so he wanted to come back and we said, ‘are you up for it?’” Ryder continued. “He was like ‘yeah, absolutely, I’d love to do it’ and we were really surprised. ‘You really want to ride this race?’ He said this is a lifetime experience to ride a race like this and I was like ‘holy shit, OK, cool’, and then he came. He’s quite positive, actually. He’s such a cute guy – I really enjoy him. He’s a quirky guy, super cool.”
Q36.5 didn’t demand anything from Pidcock – just heart, and that’s what he gave. “We didn’t expect a lot. We just wanted him to experience it, to enjoy it, to get through it,” Ryder said. “How many young riders get the chance to ride Monuments against the best in the world? And then he is fighting to finish which is so cool. He wants to complete it, he wants to get rid of being a novice in a Monument. It’s amazing that he wants to finish it and we put no pressure on him. How do riders grow if they don’t get opportunities? They can’t. Cycling has become so much like a business that there is less chance for riders to be able to achieve these successes and these opportunities in these big races, so for us we still want to develop and help riders reach their dreams, and you can only do that by throwing them in the deep end, so it’s really nice that he put his hand up to want to be here and I’m really happy that he’s finishing.”
Signed to a two-year contract, it’s the punchier races like the Classics that Pidcock can most show his capabilities. He’s now completed Roubaix, his maiden Monument, and he and his team hope there’ll be more to come. “We’re treating him as an individual in the team that has his own dreams and goals and objectives and he’s loving that opportunity and the trust and the faith that we have in him. That’s why he is here,” Ryder continued. “We would put him here if we didn’t believe in his future and the opportunity and the potential that he has and he’s embracing it so that’s nice.”
