How Brennan broke through at the highest level, partly thanks to father Pidcock: "My mother wasn't exactly thrilled about it"

From an early age, the British rider, born in June 2005, was on a bike. He would go out with his father on Saturday mornings. "I wouldn’t call it training. Just riding, enjoying it, and progressing to racing," Brennan recalls on TNT Sports. The British rider's cycling career really took off in 2022 at Fensham Howes-MAS Design. The English junior team was led by Giles Pidcock, yes, the father of Q36.5 rider Tom Pidcock. Many races in the junior circuit were held in Belgium, so Dad Pidcock regularly drove Brennan and co to Belgium. After a few good results, people started to take notice.

That included Visma | Lease a Bike. "At the time Visma were winning everything: the Tour, the Giro, the Vuelta. All the classics too,” Brennan recalls. "Then they said they wanted a call with me and to bring me to the service course. That was a really cool experience, although my mum wasn't particularly happy because it was near my exam period and I had to take a Friday off. She was like, ‘You're not going!’ And my dad was like, ‘Go on, it's the world's best cycling team, let him have the day off."

Mom Brennan listened to dad Brennan, and so the young rider went there. "We did some training and testing. I was putting out some pretty nice numbers, a good balance between sprint and aerobic." This came as quite a surprise to Visma | Lease a Bike. "Then I woke up after the camp to a call from my agent saying, ‘Visma want to sign you to the WorldTour.’ We sorted the deal and now we're happy."

The question remains: how did the exams go? "I did well. Mum was happy," Brennan recalls. Even then, the young British rider had to make many sacrifices for cycling, as did his family. "There were a lot of late nights coming home from Belgium at 3am, then your mum’s waking you up at 8am to get you to school. It was very tough, but I wouldn’t have changed it."

Brennan's breakthrough followed quickly. In his debut year as a professional, he immediately scored a victory in the GP de Denain, followed by three more WorldTour victories in the Tour of Catalonia and the Tour de Romandie. Yet the 19-year-old British rider continues to dream big. "[Paris] Roubaix would be good to win, [Milano] Sanremo would be good to win. Flanders... But also the Tour in 2027, I’ve got my eye on that one. British depart. I think starting Stage 2 in the yellow jersey would be cool," says Brennan.