Olympic champion Tom Pidcock on Saturday won the UCI Cycling World Championships cross country mountain bike marathon as a crash ended Mathieu van der Poel’s dream of a unique treble.
It was a first world title in the mountain bike event for the UK’s Pidcock, who raised a Yorkshire flag with a white rose above his head as he crossed the line after breaking away with two laps left.
He finished the undulating dirt track course in Scotland in 1 hour, 22 minutes, 9 seconds, ahead of Sam Gaze of New Zealand and Nino Schurter of Switzerland who was aiming for an 11th world title.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“My gears were not working on the last lap, they were jumping on every climb — and Gaze was coming behind. I thought it could all go in the bin at any moment,” Pidcock said. “In front of my home crowd, it’s pretty special. Coming down the final straight, I could finally soak it all in.”
The 24-year-old has also won a cyclo-cross world title and an iconic Tour de France stage on the Alpe d’Huez mountain.
Pidcock claimed cross-country short-track bronze this week in what he called a warm-up race.
A year ahead of the Paris Olympics the cross-discipline rider started on row five of a mass start, along with Van der Poel, who crashed at the end of the first lap.
Van der Poel’s first lap slip cost him a historic treble as the Dutchman was winner of February’s world cyclo-cross championships and added the road race world title to his trophies in Glasgow this week.
“My front wheel just went, the mental pain is bigger than the physical pain and it takes away some of the joy from Sunday because it was my own fault,” he said.
Earlier, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot won the cross country mountain bike world title to cement the Frenchwoman’s status as favorite for the Paris Games next year.
The 31-year-old defending champion finished in 1 hour, 24 minutes, 14 seconds. She was 1 minute, 14 seconds faster than her compatriot Loana Lecomte in the Glentress forest, where 13 world championships events are being played out. The Netherlands’ prerace favorite, Puck Pieterse, came third.
Ferrand-Prevot now has 15 world titles in different disciplines, and recently became the first female cyclist to join Ineos Grenadiers.
However, she has so far been cursed at the Olympics, coming 26th in London in 2012, pulling out in Rio de Janeiro and finishing 10th in Tokyo.
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