After the finish line in Troyes, Tom Pidcock sat on a shaded kerb, staring at the floor. His face told the story of the day. Dry and dusty, the skin on his nose looked as if it might flake off in small pieces, his facial hair powdered with dirt from the gravel tracks.
The minutes after the stage were for his own introspection. As the crowd of press around him swelled in size, Pidcock chose not to utter a word. Instead, he moved slowly, swigging a dark purple liquid from a plastic bottle, and trying to avoid eye contact. A team soigneur crouched on the tarmac beside him, respecting his wish for stillness.
On stage nine of the Tour de France, moments before the calm, Pidcock had entered the finale in a six-man breakaway group, and lost out on the win by a bike length, a metre and a half of road. He had come so close to tasting victory, that the pill of second place was a tough one to swallow.
"It's crazy how high the level is with everyone in the Tour," a downbeat Pidcock said, breaking his silence. "I'm just a bit gutted really that I missed out at the end.
"It was difficult with the two Movistar guys. [Alex] Aranburu was sat on, and it was always going to be a tricky, little sprint. After a day like that, when you're riding so hard all day, you never know. I was just slightly too late to kick."
Pidcock's move into the early breakaway ended up being a smart one. With 14 sectors of coarse gravel, and more sharp twists than the rest of the stages combined, few could predict the script at the start of the day. The Brit, determined to drive the action, went up the road with 150km to go, and helped fend off the bunch.
"I think, when I'm in the group like that, I never show how I'm really feeling, and I don't respond straight away to attacks. I kind of do it a bit slower, so in the final I have a bit more," he explained.
"This morning, I was less than 57 kilos, so when you're averaging 280 watts for four and a half hours, it's, yeah, quite a lot."
It was only on the road into Troyes that the breakaway knew the day would be theirs. Attacks began to spring out; first went Lidl-Trek’s Jasper Stuyven, then EF Education-EasyPost’s Ben Healy. Pidcock chose to bide his time.
"I was hoping that the guys would respond from behind," he said, "but it's always difficult to try and let that play out. You've got to also understand that everyone else in that group is also there to win as well, so you have to kind of play off that a little bit."
As the finish gantry drew closer, Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) picked his moment to launch a plucky sprint. TotalEnergies' Anthony Turgis tucked into the Canadian’s slipstream, towing Pidcock in his own as he burst ahead, piercing into the wind. For Pidcock, the line came seconds too early; victory went to Turgis.
"I wish I just had a bit more race craft like Cav [Mark Cavendish]," Pidcock said, his disappointment giving way to his sense of humour, and a smile cracking through the dirt on his cheeks. "I think I can be proud of that. I struggled in the first part of this race, really. You know when it's not going right, it's difficult."
Now, buoyed by a narrow second place, the 24-year-old's fortunes appear to be changing. A rest day will follow on Monday for the Tour peloton, before the race heads down towards the Pyrenees and back into the Alps, the mountain range where Pidcock rode to victory in 2022. His form on Sunday indicates he'll be up there challenging again.
