{"id":690050,"date":"2026-05-24T06:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T06:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/690050\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T06:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T06:01:10","slug":"pidcock-pipped-in-nove-mesto-xcc-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/690050\/","title":{"rendered":"Pidcock pipped in Nove Mesto XCC World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

A day after saying he might not have ridden his mountain bike enough, Tom Pidcock rolled into second in the XCC World Cup in Nove Mesto.<\/p>\n

The Olympic champ admitted after the finish line he\u2019d also miscalculated tactically, waiting too long to move up to the front of the race. The Brit still finished second, but that\u2019s rarely the result Pidcock is looking for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew when [Azzaro] was straight on my wheel. It\u2019s hard coming back to mountain bike from some time away. I feel like I\u2019ve no idea what I\u2019m doing when I come back, so it\u2019s just nice to get that first race out the way, know that I\u2019ve still got the legs. It\u2019s always a doubt when I come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still one more day of racing. And, for the XCO, Pidcock is very clear what result he expects from himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here to try and win, I\u2019ve done it every other time. I\u2019m here so need to keep that streak going.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Azzaro, its a thrilling win.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnreal, I felt the whole day I had the legs, but I was super nervous. You have to stay on the bike. That was the position I wanted in the finish,\u201d Azzaro said.<\/p>\n

The French racer was up front knows the chance to beat a rider like Pidcock is rare, and was taking time to appreciate his accomplishment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that Tom [Pidcock] was coming from the back, I just waited, he came the last lap like a Formula 1 car, and I just jumped into the wheel. It\u2019s a name that everyone knows and I\u2019m super proud to beat him, it\u2019s great to race with a champion like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Photo: Whoop UCI mountain Bike world Series \/ Michal Cerveny
\nPieterse hits Nove Mesto in stride<\/p>\n

On the women\u2019s side, Puck Pieterse had no problem stepping back in and taking control of the race. The Dutch racer was happy to be back on dirt after a road spent on the tarmac, and cobbles, around Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve missed it,\u201d Pieterse said. \u201cHere it always gets quite bunchy on the road and slows down a bit, however this year Jenny [Rissveds] was setting such a high pace that it took me a bit to get to the front. When I was there, I just decided to stay there, and tried to keep in control for the final sprint.<\/p>\n

Control is hard in Nove Mesto, especially when there\u2019s<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw Nicole [Koller] coming from the left and she was starting to step on the pedals. I thought \u2018now I have to kick\u2019, so I did. It\u2019s super cool, flashbacks to last year\u2019s Short Track here. The goal for tomorrow is just to keep the material [equipment] good and see from there how a one and a half-hour effort compares to the four-hour road sessions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A day after saying he might not have ridden his mountain bike enough, Tom Pidcock rolled into second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[21898,49,48,635,1700,62722,247950,82,43201,88305],"class_list":["post-690050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-mtb-features","tag-mtb-news","tag-nove-mesto-na-morave","tag-sports","tag-tom-pidcock","tag-xcc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}