Britain’s Tom Pidcock has won stage three of the Tour of the Alps less than a month after a “horror crash” in Spain.
The Pinarello-Q36.5 rider beat Tommaso Dati of Ukyo and Egan Bernal of Ineos Grenadiers to the line in Arco after holding his position at the head of the peloton in a sprint and powering over the line in warm weather in northern Italy.
The 26-year-old showed real strength about three weeks after suffering a high-speed crash on a descent during March’s Volta a Catalunya when he misjudged a corner.
“With my injury and the time off, it’s been difficult,” Pidcock said after the stage. “Coming back is very hard mentally – even the first time I was dropped, it was tough to deal with. So this win feels really nice.”
Pidcock, who is famed in cycling for being a ‘demon descender’ – following his 2022 Tour de France stage win on Alpe d’Huez, in which he reached speeds of 100km/h – described the crash in March as “like one of these horror crashes you see… I [was] lucky I could talk on the radio”.
The double Olympic mountain bike champion had been having a good season until the crash, narrowly losing out on victory at the Milan-San Remo monument race to Tadej Pogacar.
Pidcock is riding the Tour of the Alps in preparation for Sunday’s monument Liege-Bastogne-Liege, before taking on the Tour de France for the first time for the team he joined last year.
Meanwhile, Britain’s Ben Tulett said it was a “big surprise” to finish third in the traditional build-up race to Liege-Bastogne-Liege, La Fleche Wallonne.
Visma-Lease a Bike’s Tulett, 24, just lost out near the top of the famous Mur de Huy climb in Belgium to the much-hailed new French talent Paul Seixas of Decathlon CMA CGM, who beat Switzerland’s Mauro Schmid to victory.