{"id":491595,"date":"2026-03-23T22:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T22:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491595\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T22:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T22:56:08","slug":"my-legs-felt-heavy-at-the-start-of-the-race-today-tom-pidcock-comes-through-milan-san-remo-fatigue-to-claim-third-place-on-opening-stage-of-volta-a-catalunya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491595\/","title":{"rendered":"‘My legs felt heavy at the start of the race today’ \u2013 Tom Pidcock comes through Milan-San Remo fatigue to claim third place on opening stage of Volta a Catalunya"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fresh from a narrow miss at Milan-San Remo, <\/a>Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) came painfully but impressively close to another win at the opening stage of the Volta a Catalunya on Monday.<\/a><\/p>\n

As the front third of the bunch roared into the very technical finale and notoriously tricky uphill sprint in Sant Feliu de Gu\u00edxols, Pidcock was perfectly placed to launch an attack.<\/p>\n

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However, after committing to an early sprint, he was overtaken with 200 metres to go by both Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and eventual winner Dorian Godon (Ineos Grenadiers).<\/p>\n

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The 500-metre, 5% uphill climb to the line in Sant Feliu de Gu\u00edxols is notoriously hard to calculate, with Evenepoel, second a few years back in the same finish to Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe),<\/a> once again having to settle for runner-up spot.<\/p>\n

Pidcock, in any case, will likely be able to take away one major positive despite a second defeat in three days, that he has clearly come through his major effort at San Remo 48 hours before in excellent shape, and ready to do battle in Catalunya.<\/p>\n

“Everybody says these finishes suit me, but it’s a pure power sprint, I felt pretty good, so I can be happy with that,” Pidcock told CyclingPro.Net<\/a> later.<\/p>\n

“Everyone said San Remo is not so hard, but actually my legs felt pretty heavy today at the start of the race, and then I felt pretty good here in the end.”<\/p>\n

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As Pidcock pointed out, the very tricky, non-stop succession of climbs and descents that preceded the finish rendered it much more complicated. But as a GC rider, he had to try to finish as close to the front as possible in any case right the way through to the line – and despite those earlier challenges, he even went as far as to place his uphill sprint as the best one he had ever done of that particular type.<\/p>\n

“It was really hard, like everyone said along the coast, up and down, crosswind, tailwind, headwind,” he explained.<\/p>\n

“Then I just had a go in the sprint, I had to be up there anyway in such a technical finale.”<\/p>\n

“I just had to go a little bit early because in an uphill sprint like that, you can lose speed and it’s all over anyway. So I think that was the best sprint like that that I ever did. I can be happy with that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh from a narrow miss at Milan-San Remo, Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) came painfully but impressively close to another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-491595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491595","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=491595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}