Olympic champion Tom Pidcock won the world championship cross country mountain bike marathon on Saturday as a crash ended Mathieu van der Poel’s dream of a unique treble.
It was a first world title in the mountain bike event for Pidcock who raised a Yorkshire flag with a white rose above his head as he crossed the line after breaking away with two laps to go.
The 24-year-old has also won a cyclo-cross world title and an iconic stage on the Tour de France at the Alpe d’Huez mountain.
Pidcock claimed cross-country short track bronze this week in what he called a warm-up race.
A year ahead of the Paris Olympics the cross-discipline rider started on row five of a mass start along with van der Poel, who crashed at the end of the first lap.
The Yorkshireman finished the undulating dirt track course in 1hr 22min 09sec, ahead of Sam Gaze of New Zealand and Nino Schurter of Switzerland who was aiming for an 11th world title.
Van der Poel’s first lap slip cost him a historic treble as the Dutchman was winner of February’s world cyclo-cross championships and added the road race world title to his trophies in Glasgow this week.
“My front wheel just went, the mental pain is bigger than the physical pain and it takes away some of the joy from Sunday because it was my own fault,” he said.
Earlier, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot won the cross country mountain bike world title to cement the Frenchwoman’s status as favourite for the Paris Games next year.
The 31-year-old defending champion was 1min 14sec faster than her compatriot Loana Lecomte in the Glentress forest in Scotland where 13 world championships events are being played out.
The Netherlands’ pre-race favourite Puck Pieterse came third at 1min 27sec. Ferrand-Prevot now has 15 world titles in various disciplines and recently became the first female cyclist to join Ineos Grenadiers.
She has so far been cursed at the Olympics however coming 26th at London 2012, pulling out at Rio and finishing 10th in Tokyo.—AFP
