This time last year Pidcock was enjoying a fine run of late-season form, finishing second at the Giro dell\u2019Emilia, one of a series of autumnal one-day races building up to the year\u2019s final Monument, Il Lombardia. He was second only to Tadej Pogacar<\/a>, so essentially the best of the mere mortals. <\/p>\n That did not stop Ineos from, at the last minute, and to widespread surprise, removing him from their squad for Il Lombardia. It was an astonishing move, shooting themselves in the foot as well as Pidcock. No logical explanation was forthcoming. But it was clear that Pidcock\u2019s relationship with the team had imploded. <\/p>\n It was also clear that Ineos\u2019 time as a power player in the sport was long since over, reduced from competing for titles to small-minded bickering. The best-placed Ineos rider ended up being Thymen Arensman, over seven minutes down in an anonymous 15th place. <\/p>\n A year on, things are quite different, on both sides of the divorce \u2013 one that was ultimately amicable, Pidcock has been at pains to stress. The Brit is once again in a late-season flush of form, having established himself as a serious grand tour contender with a third-place finish<\/a> at the Vuelta a Espana<\/a>. He has carried that form into the autumn Italian classics, taking another second place at dell\u2019Emilia earlier this week \u2013 this time behind Pogacar\u2019s young disciple Isaac del Toro, rather than the Slovenian himself. <\/p>\n There was no World Championships medal<\/a> on the inhumanely difficult Rwandan course, but this has been a season of growing maturity and improving consistency, leaving Ineos well and truly behind. There has been something of a shift in attitude, too, a more relaxed, easily-worn confidence in his interviews, a clear synergy with his team. <\/p>\n For Ineos, it has been \u2013 like so many of their recent seasons \u2013 a year in flux, with off-bike dramas in the headlines as much as results on the road. A long-serving staff member was alleged to have exchanged messages with disgraced doping doctor Mark Schmidt<\/a>, with the case under investigation by the International Testing Agency. There will be a major absence on the team bus next year after Geraint Thomas<\/a>, the lynchpin of the team, hung up his cleats. <\/a><\/p>\n On the positive side, their Tour de France was rescued by two stage wins courtesy of rangy Dutch climber Arensman. <\/a>The expensively-acquired Egan Bernal<\/a> has finally appeared back in the vicinity of his best, if not quite his best, with a stage win at the Vuelta<\/a> three and a half years on from a crash which nearly killed him. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Pidcock was 10th at this year’s World Championships, the only British rider to finish (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n But cycling has moved on in those years, and the one-time wunderkind Bernal is no longer the future. Ineos, as has been said many times, have been left behind. Work is underway to remedy that, although whether it has the desired effect remains to be seen. French petrochemicals giant TotalEnergies has joined as a jersey sponsor, while \u2018marginal gains\u2019 behemoth Dave Brailsford has returned to the fold, masterminding things behind the scenes. <\/a><\/p>\n French climber Kevin Vauquelin has just been announced as a new rider. After coming seventh at the Tour this year and a former Tour de France stage winner, Ineos will be desperate for the 24-year-old to succeed where others like Carlos Rodriguez, Arensman and in latter years Bernal have fallen short. Brailsford, intriguingly, was the only Ineos management figure to be quoted on the signing, rather than chief executive John Allert. A new era is underway, they hope. <\/p>\n Over at Q36.5 HQ, Project Pidcock is gathering pace too. This year\u2019s Vuelta podium was achieved with a comparatively overachieving squad<\/a>; that has been bolstered by a raft of clever signings, with WorldTour riders Eddie Dunbar, Chris Harper and Fred Wright joining the team over the winter. More and more riders are buying into the culture and the idea of a disruptor team. It certainly hasn\u2019t pulled its punches this year. <\/p>\n Pidcock brings his season to a close with one final, brutal weekend of racing: Il Lombardia on Saturday, the gravel World Championships on Sunday. A cyclocross programme may follow, although he admitted earlier this year it is unlikely<\/a> as he focuses on the road. Years on from Ineos trying to force their multi-disciplinary rider into a grand tour box, that same rider is willingly sacrificing other elements of his career to turn himself into a force over three weeks. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Pogacar is going for an unprecedented run of five straight wins at Il Lombardia, having won every edition he has participated in (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n But that is not at the expense of the one-day races. Lombardia is, like every race he enters, Pogacar\u2019s to lose. But the peloton\u2019s great and good will all descend on Lombardy this weekend, one last school reunion for the class of 2025: besides Pidcock, Remco Evenepoel, Primoz Roglic, Jai Hindley, Del Toro, Ben Healy<\/a>, Oscar Onley<\/a>, Mattias Skjelmose and French starlet Paul Seixas<\/a> will all be confident of a result. One major name is missing: Jonas Vingegaard\u2019s abortive experiment in one-day racing<\/a> at the European Championships is over for another year. <\/p>\n Even the best are not invincible and Pogacar has of course been beaten this year \u2013 including by three riders on the startlist: Evenepoel, Skjelmose, and Filippo Ganna. But it is vanishingly unlikely this weekend as he looks to equal Fausto Coppi\u2019s long-standing record of five wins at Il Lombardia, and set a new record as the first to ever win five consecutive editions. <\/p>\n Whatever happens, it will be a spectacle. Victory would only add to the ever-more-spectacular Pogacar story. Defeat would no doubt make him even hungrier for 2026. <\/p>\n There could be no better end to this chapter of Pidcock\u2019s career \u2013 one year on from hitting rock bottom with Ineos \u2013 than the Briton, no stranger to disrupting the status quo, beating Pogacar in his own backyard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-191368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Pidcock](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/SEI268068795.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Pogacar](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/SEI269144045.jpeg\")
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