{"id":514069,"date":"2026-03-02T15:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/514069\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T15:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:04:09","slug":"what-happened-to-tom-pidcock-when-he-was-dropped-in-omloop-het-nieuwsblad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/514069\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened to Tom Pidcock when he was dropped in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pinarello\u2013Q36.5 came to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad<\/a> to deliver, and with a fifth place it\u2019s fair to say the team did exactly that. The problem: the strong top-10 result <\/a>didn\u2019t come from their intended leader Tom Pidcock<\/a>, but from Aim\u00e9 De Gendt instead. Afterwards, both rider and team offered an explanation via the squad\u2019s official channels.<\/p>\n

De Gendt, a pure engine by trade, was not showing up in top form in this kind of race for the first time. The 31-year-old Belgian was seventh in a hard E3 Classic last year and spent much of the day in the break at the Cl\u00e1sica Ja\u00e9n earlier this season. His legs were clearly in order again \u2014 good enough to turn a brutal, rain-and-wind-soaked Omloop into a fifth place.<\/p>\n

De Gendt was still able to ride clear of the peloton behind winner Mathieu van der Poel and the duo of Tim van Dijke and Florian Vermeersch \u2014 just as Christophe Laporte (Visma | Lease a Bike) managed to do. \u201cWith all the crashes and the cold, the main thing was to stay out of trouble. I\u2019ve made the best of it with fifth place,\u201d he said afterwards on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read more below the video<\/p>\n

Pidcock battled himself in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad<\/p>\n

The big question afterwards was simple: where was Tom Pidcock? The 26-year-old Brit had looked sharp earlier in the season, winning a stage in the Ruta del Sol, and he also finished on the podium in both the Tour of Murcia (third) and Cl\u00e1sica Ja\u00e9n (second) after a high-altitude camp in Chile. But in Omloop, Pidcock was dropped right as the finale exploded. He still finished the race \u2014 48th, around two minutes down on the winner.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, it was about surviving from the moment it started raining after 30 kilometres,\u201d Pidcock explained. \u201cI could only focus on staying warm and not crashing \u2014 it was a battle with myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pinarello\u2013Q36.5 added that Pidcock didn\u2019t simply lose contact on legs alone. He was forced to change bikes after someone rode into his derailleur, and from that moment he was chasing back.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least I didn\u2019t crash, so I\u2019m happy I got through it. That\u2019s positive,\u201d Pidcock concluded. His next major date is already circled: Strade Bianche on 7 March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pinarello\u2013Q36.5 came to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad to deliver, and with a fifth place it\u2019s fair to say the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,231522,245768,85,63570],"class_list":["post-514069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-omloop-het-nieuwsblad","tag-pinarello-q36-5-pro-cycling","tag-sports","tag-tom-pidcock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}