Giles Pidcock remembers a conversation he had with his 12-year-old son, Tom, about what it meant to truly ‘make it’ in cycling. “My view of success was getting paid to ride your bike, being a pro,” he says. His son had grander ideas. “Tom said, ‘F*** that. No, no, no. I want to win Paris-Roubaix, the Tour de France, the World Championships’,” Giles laughs. “His aspirations were just unlimited, and that struck me as being quite ambitious. But that’s Tom, isn’t it? Everything’s possible.”
It was four years earlier, when Tom was eight, that his passion for the Tour took root. Every July he would wait for his father to get home so they could watch the daily highlights on TV. If they were heading out for an evening ride, they’d record the broadcast to watch when they got back. It was only natural, then, that when Tom turned pro with Ineos Grenadiers in 2021, the race became a central ambition of his career.
