One day when Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) underlined his overwhelming status as a Tour de France favorite with a stage victory at Longwy, Tom Pidcock gave Ineos Grenadiers reasons to be optimistic after the 22-year-old player. years achieved his first result among the top five in this year’s race.
Riding in a final with more than a few similarities to mountain classics such as Amstel Gold and De Brabantse Pijl, Pidcock was part of the select front group able to cope with the radical changes of pace in the trio of small steep climbs that included the arrival of stage 6. and completed the day in fourth place.
Pidcock had been active in a team role in previous stages, and had also tried to get into the break early Thursday. But when the stage was finally over, Longwy’s final was his first chance to face some of the Tour de France’s top contenders, and he grabbed it with both hands.
The Briton was as impressed as the rest of the field by the devastating show of strength of Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) on the longest stage of the Tour, and told Eurosport jokingly: “He’s playing with the our balls, right? I don’t know what to say, really.
As for his own performance in one of the most rehearsed transition stages of the entire Tour, Pidcock told the TV channel that it had been a roller coaster.
“My legs have gone well in the last 30 miles, but after that start and trying to get into the break, I thought there was no way to play that final, by any means.”
However, Pidcock discovered that he was actually in better shape than expected, however, he was not caught first by a Slovenian Grand Tour winner in the last hundreds of meters, but by two.
“I felt good there, and then [Jumbo-Visma’s Primož] Roglič left early and took everyone by surprise. I had to stop and my impulse killed me, ”he said.
“[Then] I think I did a good sprint, but Pogačar was the strongest there, so I played clean. “
The next for Pidcock is probably a team role in La Planches des Belles Filles, but his first position in GC, fifth in 40 seconds, gives him and his team several cards to play. But in the longer term, too, after the grueling stage through the cobblestones, Thursday’s trip works really well.