Tom Pidcock was accused of unsportsmanlike riding after the Olympic cross-country champion took the bronze medal in the UCI Cycling World Championships short track event in Glentress Forest near Peebles.
Luca Schwarzbauer of Germany was in bronze medal position as the lead group entered the final corner but claimed that Pidcock, racing through on the inside of the bend, deliberately crashed him out of the race in his effort to win a medal.
“It’s easily said,” Schwarzbauer said. “Tom crashed me out, he completely rode into me in that corner. I’m super-disappointed because a bronze medal would have been pretty safe. He’s Tom Pidcock, he’s a superstar, but that doesn’t give him the right to do something like that.”
Speaking within minutes of the race ending, Pidcock seemed to accept there had been contact between them. “I went for the inside and pushed him out on to the gravel and then Luca’s crashed unfortunately,” he said. Asked if there had been contact, the 24-year-old responded: “Probably.”
Schwarzbauer added that he had confronted Pidcock at the finish. “I said it was a very bad move in my eyes,” the German rider said. “At first, he said: ‘It’s part of the racing,’ but then he realised I had crashed. But he’s so aggressive, you can really see he’s the most aggressive rider, no one else rides like this.
“But when he rides like this, I’m going to crash because he was straight into me and he used me as a barrier. I think no mountain biker would do this at all, like a pure mountain biker, [of] the community.”
Pidcock, who goes in the cross-country on Saturday, later responded to Schwarzbauer’s comments, telling PA Media: “If you no longer go for a gap then you’re no longer a racing driver. Of course, I did not mean to cause him to crash and I’m sorry for that.”
With Schwarzbauer out of the final straight, Pidcock raced through to claim bronze behind Sam Gaze of New Zealand and the silver medallist, Victor Koretzky of France.
Pidcock sat just behind the lead group for most of the race before surging into medal contention on the last drop to the finish line. “The guys in the front were kind of stalling at the top of the climb every lap, just sprinting and then stopping,” he said.
“I would sit back and then try and come forward, but I didn’t really know what was going to happen on the bell at the finish. I’m pretty happy,. I only did this to prepare for Saturday but this morning I was pretty up for it and it’s nice to have a medal.”
In the women’s short track race, Britain’s Evie Richards battled hard to claim bronze, after France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot broke clear on the final climb to defend her world title successfully, with Puck Pieterse of the Netherlands in the silver medal position.
“I’m super-happy,” Richards said. “I tried to calm down, but it’s very easy to get carried away when everyone is cheering your name.”
Sarah Storey took the 36th para cycling gold of her career in the women’s C1 individual time trial in Dumfries. The Briton was the second rider off and won comfortably from Australia’s Alana Foster.
In the elite women’s time trial, Chloe Dygert of the United States proved the dominant rider, with a second world title in the discipline. But it was a near-miss for Britain’s Anna Henderson, who seemed set for a medal until she was edged out of medal contention by just two seconds.
Izzy Sharp claimed the silver medal in the junior women’s time-trial in her final year as a junior after surviving a mechanical mishap in the final 200 metres. “I came for the rainbow jersey, but I gave everything I could,” the 18 year old said.
“I was in the hot seat for quite a while so I had to just hope and hold on to second place. I felt quite tired after the first climb, so I knew I had to sort of recover a little bit and save as much as I could.”
