Medical marvel Tom Pidcock on three crazy weeks — physically and mentally — and Liège

To understand Pidcock’s fall, we have to go back to March 28, stage six of the Volta a Catalunya. The crash itself was not shown on television, but when Pidcock rolled across the finish line almost half an hour behind the winner, it quickly became clear how serious the situation had been. The two-time Olympic mountain bike champion had shot into a ravine on a descent, but somehow climbed back up himself.

“I was drinking on the descent and misjudged a corner. I overshot it and went down the ravine. It was like one of these horror crashes you see, but I am okay,” said Pidcock. He still rode to the finish, keeping alive the possibility of continuing in Catalonia. But because of the damage, especially to his right knee, that turned out to be impossible.

“I still consider myself extremely lucky. A stupid mistake to throw away good form, but now it’s just about trying to get back on the bike as quickly as possible,” he said the day after the crash. Pidcock sounded hopeful, but anyone who saw the state of his knee — and then saw him stretched out on Instagram with a LEGO set — probably started putting a cautious line through the Ardennes Classics.

Pidcock did not need to say too much about his crash and recovery after the team presentation in Innsbruck, because a few days earlier he had already discussed it in detail by phone with the New York Times. First, then, the crash itself: what exactly happened in that ravine after he misjudged the corner and could no longer avoid falling into the depth below?

“I saw a fencing barrier, but I decided not to go for that because I thought, ‘I’m going to go flying down the mountain into God knows what.’ So instead I aimed for a tree — it wasn’t much more than a few branches really,” Pidcock recalled. “I landed, and just remember feeling like my arm couldn’t move. My leg was dead. And I was thinking that nobody else had crashed. I was alone down this hill, I didn’t know what I’d hurt because everything was hurting and I couldn’t move.”

Pidcock feared he might be in the ravine for a long time, but his radio worked — and, fortunately, not long afterward, so did his legs. “I climbed out,” he said. Once back on the bike, his legs did not even feel too bad. His hand hurt, as did his elbow and shoulder. He thought there was no way that could be right, but the next day it was mainly his knee that had swollen up “like a balloon.”

The medical report showed bone bruising, stress fractures in the tibia and damage to several ligaments and bones in the knee. After an additional check in Barcelona, his physio estimated a minimum recovery time of eight weeks. In the first phase, the main priority was rest, reducing the swelling and allowing the damage in the knee to heal by itself. Surgery was not required.

“After a week I got on the bike for a bit, but that only made it worse,” said Pidcock, who therefore turned his attention to a LEGO set. He also enjoyed time with his fiancée and his two dogs. In the end, however, it was not rest that suddenly accelerated the process, but the draining of fluid — in other words, thick blood — from the knee. “From there, the pain kept decreasing, and so did the swelling.”

His physio Remi Mobed, also speaking to the New York Times, could hardly believe that Pidcock was able to start the Tour of the Alps just three weeks after the crash. “Tom’s mindset allowed us to push the boundaries in his recovery, although he always had to meet certain recovery criteria. He always met those, and often he was already much further along. His work ethic, professionalism and perseverance were the driving forces behind an exceptional recovery.”

And so, on Saturday evening after the team presentation, IDLProCycling.com suddenly found itself standing opposite a recovered Pidcock. On the day Remco Evenepoel won the Amstel Gold Race, a race Pidcock loves so much, the Brit was in Austria. Asked about his physical condition, he had already said before the weekend: “We don’t know. I feel pretty good in training; maybe the rest has done me good.”

“But it could also come back like a boomerang. I feel better than we thought I would, and that is why I am starting here,” said the all-rounder. With a week of Tour of the Alps ahead of him, Pidcock hopes to combine recovery, improvement and racing rhythm — while also keeping alive the chance of a strong Liège-Bastogne-Liège. “Liège was the biggest goal of my spring.”

Brabantse Pijl, Amstel and Flèche Wallonne have all been crossed off, but that does not necessarily have to be the case for La Doyenne, provided the Tour of the Alps sends the right signals. “I can still take part, although it will be with a different, more relaxed mindset. Everything that comes now is a bonus. Maybe it doesn’t work and I end up completely destroyed, but I have nothing to lose.”

The mental side of the past few weeks should not be underestimated either. “I don’t feel any PTSD, because this crash was mainly down to my own misjudgment,” Pidcock said. On Saturday, he added: “It was an unfortunate combination of circumstances. I’m really not worried about it.”

As unlucky as the crash was, almost everything that followed turned out to be fortunate. Pidcock did not ride for nine days, but: “I’m lucky, because actually by cycling, the body recovered faster. If I hadn’t been a cyclist and hadn’t tried to ride, it would have taken longer. When we noticed that the swelling was actually going down because of cycling, I started training harder again quite quickly.”

“I have no pain and my shape was actually pretty good when I started again.” Pinarello-Q36.5 even briefly considered a return at Flèche Wallonne. “But there you really have to be at one hundred percent. You can’t hide there. Here I can do longer climbs, and that is exactly where I need to improve. We will know quickly how good I am, and in Liège we will then see how good it really is.”

There is positivity, then, because the impact of such a heavy crash does not appear to have been too great physically or mentally. But will it have any impact on the UCI? Pidcock did not say without reason to the New York Times that things could have ended differently. “You forget how vulnerable we are. Despite cars, motorbikes and helicopters, I was lying there and nobody knew.”

He has not heard from the UCI in recent weeks, but of course Pidcock has followed the ongoing discussion about safety. His own crash was another example. He calls it “a difficult subject.” Measures are being taken that do not harm safety, but with technology, he believes steps can also be made without changing the sport itself.

This situation also seems different because Pidcock mainly blames himself for the crash. That is where he placed the emphasis then, and where he still places it now. “I was so good — maybe that was why I crashed. Maybe I was too complacent because I felt so good. It was a weird crash, one that maybe didn’t need to happen. I was too relaxed.”

Bram van der Ploeg ( X: @BvdPloegg | email : [email protected])