Tom Pidcock has admitted he faces pressure from the Ineos Grenadiers to put greater focus on the Tour de France but the world and Olympic mountain bike champion is determined to keep enjoying multiple disciplines for a little while longer.

The 24-year-old is seen as a potential future Tour winner but though he took a famous stage victory on the Alpe d’Huez in 2022 and rode to 13th overall this year, the Yorkshireman is yet to concentrate solely on the road, and this year added the world mountain bike title to his Olympic crown.

Pidcock also won the cyclo-cross world title last year, and while his pursuit of multiple goals is delaying the day when he might be ready to chase Tour glory, he believes a varied approach is making him a better all-round rider.

“Maybe I need to specialise in one discipline if I want to win the Tour, but I know that you’ll get the best out of me when I’m happy and when I’m enjoying it,” Pidcock said on the Red Bull Just Ride podcast. “Which is why I love other disciplines…

“Of course I want to win the Tour de France one day but the patience and preparation is massive.

“There is the element (of pressure from the team) and I knew that when I committed long term to the team. I also want it, but in my own way. I want to achieve all the things I believe I can achieve…

“Right now, I’m not ready to win the Tour de France next year yet. There has to be more steps where I achieve things in different disciplines and achieving them makes me a better rider.”

Pidcock was speaking after the Mountain Bike World Cup event in Mont-Sainte-Anne, where he won the cross-country race to continue preparations for his Olympic title defence next summer.

Pidcock has also enjoyed success on the road this season, winning Strade Bianche in March before podium finishes at the Amstel Gold Race and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

But Ineos, a team who won the Tour seven times out of eight between 2012 and 2019, have found themselves left behind at the world’s biggest race in recent years as UAE Team Emirates and Jumbo-Visma have come to the fore, and the Grenadiers need a lift.

While Pidcock could perhaps emerge as a rival if he went all-in, he is reluctant to do so – the three-week slog of the Tour at odds with his instinctive style.

Looking back to his Alpe d’Huez win, he added: “You’re the centre of attention but only for a couple of hours – then you’re back to it with massage and food. Before you know it, you’re on the next stage the next day and there’s a new winner so it’s done.

“Compared to when I won the Olympics where you’re on the front of all the newspapers back home and people want interviews and chats that you could live off for months. With the Tour, it never stops and you have to be ready to race again.”

Pidcock plans to ride the Tour again next summer, but has to balance that with his ambitions in both the mountain bike race and the road race at the Paris Olympics, which begin only eight days after the Tour finishes in Nice.

The tight schedule is behind his decision to keep chasing mountain bike qualification points late into the year.

“By doing these races at the end of the year now, it will mean I don’t have to do the mountain bike races in the spring which will allow me better prep for the Tour,” he said.

“Then I’ll hopefully come out of the end of that in a better condition to cope with the start of the Olympics.”

:: Tom Pidcock is a Red Bull athlete. He was speaking on the latest Red Bull Just Ride podcast. Listen to the full episode here.

Tom Pidcock became the first British man to be crowned world mountain bike cross-country champion at the elite level with a dominant victory in the Olympic race at the UCI Cycling World Championships in Glentress Forest.

The 24-year-old rode away from 10-time world champion Nino Schurter with two and a half of the eight laps remaining and soloed to win ahead of Sam Gaze, having the time for a slightly awkward celebration as he crossed the line with a Yorkshire flag wrapped around his face.

Pidcock adds the world mountain bike title to the Olympic crown he took in Tokyo and the cyclo-cross world title he won in 2022, plus achievements on the road that include a Tour de France stage win last year and victory at Strade Bianche this spring.

“It feels good,” Pidcock said. “It’s a big relief. It’s been a long week building up to this.

“In front of my home crowd, it’s pretty special. Coming down the final straight, I could finally soak it all in.

“Before that, the last few laps were so stressful. My gears were not working on the last lap, they were jumping on every climb – and Gaze was coming behind. I thought it could all go in the bin at any moment.”

Pidcock made this event a major target in his season, reluctantly skipping last weekend’s road race in order to commit all of his energies.

Mathieu Van Der Poel, who won that road race and then pitched up here, crashed out on the opening circuit.

Pidcock sliced through the field at the start, going from 30th to fifth in the first two laps and then continuing to push on the pace to make sure it would be a very selective battle for the medals.

There was controversy before the race as the UCI adopted World Cup rules to elevate road stars Pidcock, Van Der Poel and Peter Sagan to the fourth row of the grid, rather than further back according to their ranking, with the governing body even admitting the move was because of the “added value” they bring.

That led to several rivals co-signing an open letter condemning the decision, feeding into the narrative that began after Thursday’s short-track race when German Luca Schwarzbauer said Pidcock was not part of the community of “pure mountain bikers” after a late crash between the pair.

Pidcock, who took time out of his Tour build-up to collect UCI points in World Cup races in Novo Mesto in May, said the decision to change the grid was “bulls***”.

“It’s outrageous,” he said. “A rule like that needs to be put in place in January. I sacrificed three weeks of my preparation for the Tour to try and get some points and this week they changed the rule. You can’t do that. It’s not fair.”

Evie Richards settled for sixth in the women’s race as French star Pauline Ferrand-Prevot successfully defender her Olympic title days after also defending her short track crown.

Ferrand-Prevot was effectively in a race of her own, with more than a minute’s cushion over team-mate Loana Lecomte, while Richards – third in Thursday’s short track race – tried to battle Alessandra Keller, Puck Pieterse and Mona Mitterwallner for bronze but faded in the last couple of laps.

““I was tired to start, so I just tried to hang on for dear life after getting a good start,” Richards said. “I pushed as hard as I could and couldn’t stay with that medal – but I gave it all that I could. I think I was still tired from the short track, to be honest.

“I just felt I was really happy that I could push, that I was competitive, I wasn’t off the back – and the crowds were amazing. I feel really lucky that I got to race in front of them today.”

Tom Pidcock took cross-country short track bronze on his mountain bike at the UCI Cycling World Championships but then had to defend himself against accusations of bad sportsmanship from German rival Luca Schwarzbauer after a final corner collision.

The reigning Olympic mountain bike champion made a late lunge for the inside line on the sharp final bend of the Glentress Forest course and surprised Schwarzbauer as the pair touched, sending the German to the ground and putting him out of the medals as New Zealand’s Sam Gaze beat Victor Koretzky to gold.

Schwarzbauer then made his feelings clear, claiming the move was deliberate on Pidcock’s part.

“Tom crashed me out, he completely rode into me in that corner,” he said. “I’m super disappointed for sure because a bronze medal would have been pretty safe. He’s Tom Pidcock, but that doesn’t give him the right to do something like that.

“I said a few words to him and said it was a very bad move in my eyes. At first he said, ‘It’s part of the racing,’ but then he realised I had crashed.

“But I think he knew already. When he rides like this I’m going to crash because he was straight into me and he used me as a barrier. Already before the corner actually – he ran full gas into it and I think no mountain biker would do this at all, like a pure mountain biker, the community of us.

“I know he’s Tom Pidcock and he’s a superstar, but this doesn’t give him the right to do that…He’s so aggressive, you can really see he’s the most aggressive rider, no one else rides like this. You can do this but in my eyes it’s not really sportsman (like).”

Pidcock played down the incident immediately after the race but, told of Schwarzbauer’s comments, he told the PA news agency: “What’s that famous saying? If you no longer go for a gap then you’re no longer a racing driver. Of course I did not mean to cause him to crash and I’m sorry for that.”

That incident aside, Pidcock was happy with his performance in a race where he came from well down the pack to put himself in contention, at one point making up nine places in a single lap as he rose from 18th to third.

Although he could not respond when Gaze made a big move on the final lap, Pidcock will take confidence going into Saturday’s cross-country Olympic race, his big target at these worlds.

“I’m pretty happy,” he said. “I only did this to prepare for Saturday but this morning I was pretty up for it and it’s nice to have a medal.

“This is not really my sort of race so it’s good for Saturday I think. My legs were not super but come the weekend I think it will be OK.”

Evie Richards then delivered a second bronze for Great Britain in the women’s race as France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prevot – Pidcock’s Ineos Grenadiers team-mate – successfully defended her title ahead of Puck Pieterse.

Richards, the 2021 cross-country Olympic world champion, admitted the excitement of racing at home played a part as she put herself on the front in the early laps before dropping back, and she was then unable to respond to Ferrand-Prevot’s winning attack on the final lap.

“I think it’s always a bit stupid when you go off the front but I always do it, don’t I?” she said. “I tried to calm down, it’s very easy to get carried away when everyone is cheering your name…

“It’s been a real hard few years since winning the world championships so to be back here is really amazing, and to win a medal is even better.”

Tom Pidcock believes the racing at this year’s Tour de France will be different as a result of Gino Mader’s death at the Tour de Suisse less than two weeks ago.

Mader, who was 26, died on June 16 as a result of injuries suffered when he crashed into a ravine on a high-speed descent, and rider safety has been a hot topic in the build up to Saturday’s opening stage.

Pidcock, who was also racing in Switzerland, lit up the Tour de France on debut last year with an incredible descent off the Galibier setting up his victory on the Alpe d’Huez.

But asked if he expected the approach to racing to be impacted by what happened in Switzerland, the 23-year-old said: “I think so. I think especially for everyone who was at the race, that was pretty hard hitting.

“I didn’t see a single rider take any risks after that incident on the last two stages. Personally I think one of the things that hit me was it happened descending which is something that I love.

“It kind of showed me what the consequences can be when it goes wrong. I never take uncalculated risks when I’m descending, I don’t take unnecessary risks but things can happen when we’re riding down a descent at 100 kilometres an hour in lycra.”

Pidcock heads into this year’s Tour aiming to better last year’s debut. For him, that means being more consistent in the general classification so there will be no deliberately losing time to get in a breakaway. If he is to win another stage, he wants it to be from the group of favourites.