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Tom 'Pidders' Pidcock

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It was only a matter of time before he showed his climbing / GC potential among the pros. You don't win the Giro U23 (including the Mortirolo - Aprica stage) by accident.
Stunning win today, youngest ever Alpe d'Huez winner I've heard?

Also, his style while descending is marvelous.
It certainly wasn't an accident, but at least as much due to weak opposition, let's be honest. It's a shame he crashed out of the 2019 Avenir, because that would have given us a better idea, vs a 2 year older Foss and Champoussin, Van Wilder... Great climbing performance but after losing 10 minutes yesterday, it doesn't necessarily say much about his GC potential. Yet.

Good ride though. Especially impressed by the fact that he had to go hard in the chase and ended up having enough in the tank to drop everyone. I'm especially happy that he 's showing good form after a (imho) disappointed classics season. Looks like his stomach issues are gone.
 
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He said a few days back that he knew he could do good 10 minute efforts, but didn't know about the longer efforts, cos he hasn"t been training fir that. If he concentrates properly on stage racing, he's going to be a serious force.
Probably, yeah.

Looks like he was mainly here to target stages with punchy finales like the one in Lausanne. He was very disappointed after that stage.
 
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He actually looked like he knew he was going to win from the bottom of the Alpe. Unbelievably cool and composed riding.

I really liked his post-stage interview where he was describing how mad the experience was (I think he meant the tunnel of noise and lunacy on the climb.) Really good to hear somebody talking about what it feels like to be where he was.
 
does he now lose time and go for more stages and possibly even the KOM? That would have taken a lot out of him, and from what you hear of Tom, he is not one to care about finishing 7/8th overall.
As he likes to tick off targets, the polkadots seems like a pretty cool one to me.
Yesterday also showed he doesn't need to give away too much time to get himself in the break, although it would make it easier. +he could well end up in the top 10 anyway.
 
At this point, Pidcock is showing brighter prospects for GC placement in grand tours than Remco. Okay, now that I've kicked the hornet's nest, I'll just step back. :laughing:
He certainly has less obvious weaknesses, if not, at this point, the ftp/kg or ftp/cda.

I think he should ride for GC for the rest of the race. That will help Ineos wrap up the team prize, and provide more of an indication of future GC success. Might also be needed to help G or Yates at some point too. If the chance presents to go for another stage, then great, but not at the risk of the aforementioned.
 
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It was only a matter of time before he showed his climbing / GC potential among the pros. You don't win the Giro U23 (including the Mortirolo - Aprica stage) by accident.
Stunning win today, youngest ever Alpe d'Huez winner I've heard?

Also, his style while descending is marvelous.
Just wondering a bit why GCs are the route he wants to go after earls classics success. Judging but this year it certainly comes at the expense of power there.
 
It was indeed a tremendous stage win. But if you want the measure of his potential GC, consider that he barely beat Meintjes, who at his best is a top 10 GC rider by attrition, in a breakaway.

with discipline and the Skyneos system, I definitely think he could podium a GT, if everything breaks his way. But he hasn't yet shown that he can hang with the top climbers day after day. I'd prefer to see him as a classics/cx/mtb all-rounder who can pull off a suprise like yesterday or Wout on double Ventoux. Much more exciting than seeing him slowly drift down to 8th place in the Vuelta...

With his bike handling skills I think he's got a Strade Bianche win in him sooner rather than later.
 
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To compare them two Piddock and Evenepoel.... Well in a perfect world they both would probably evolve towards each others strenghts.

Remco towards ultimate bikehandling, WVA challenging sprint. Tom towards super tt'er, higher overall day to day endurance.

I think that Piddock is getting very close to mens WCS ability, route wise, seen how he was in Belgium and how he's going forward atm. But in stage racing between these two Evenepoel is prolly just a bit bigger engine.
 

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