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Tom Pidcock is confident he has recovered well from a recent bout of Covid as he prepares for the defence of his Olympic mountain bike title on Monday.
Pidcock, 24, was forced to pull out of the Tour de France on the morning of stage 14 a little under two weeks ago after testing positive and displaying symptoms.
“I’m fine,” Pidcock said on Friday. “I was six days positive…I was quite sick to be honest, and after the stages it was making it worse so it was a decision that it was better that I stopped.
“I’m in a good place. I’m happy with where I am, I’ve recovered well. I think I can be pretty content with how my recovery went.”
Had Pidcock made it to the final stage of the Tour last weekend, he would have had only eight days to get ready for the Olympic race but he said he had always intended to get as far as Nice before becoming ill.
“Getting sick was not part of that plan, and we have to adapt to that,” he added.
The mountain bike races will take place on Sunday and Monday at Elancourt Hill, a former quarry site on the outskirts of Paris, with the women’s race on Sunday before the men follow a day later.
Pidcock said the course is “a bit bland”, heavy on gravel sections and lacking the natural features of the courses that make up the World Cup schedule.
“It’s not the best course in the world but it’s the same for everyone,” he said. “They could have done better job of making it more of a mountain bike course.”
Former world champion Evie Richards, who will aim to better her seventh place at the Tokyo Olympics, agreed. Although it was raining in Paris on Friday with damp conditions due to continue into the early hours of Saturday, neither rider expected that to have much of an impact.
“We like a natural course that changes with the conditions,” Richards said. “It won’t be muddy, I don’t think it can turn muddy, but they’ve done the best they can with how close it is to Paris – it’s not easy to pop up a mountain bike course anywhere.
“If I had designed it, I would have more natural features, not man-made, but I think we normally see that in an Olympics compared to a World Cup where you’re in the Alps or a ski resort somewhere.
“There’s just one line to take. Normally there’s lot of different lines and you can choose…It’s probably easier to learn but there’s less choice when you come to race.”
After Monday’s men’s race, Pidcock will turn his attention to the road race the following Saturday.
With the mountain bike race his priority, Pidcock said he would be delighted with a medal of any colour in that event.
“I’m going to think about the road race on Tuesday,” he said. “I think it could be quite open. The teams are pretty small, the field is small so it could be quite a different dynamic. You might have to be a bit more open-minded, a bit more aggressive.”
