<\/p>\n
\u201cCycling has taken me far, allowed me to discover places, meet people and experience worlds that I otherwise would never have encountered,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt has tested me, taught me to confront my limits, fatigue, defeats and expectations and, more than anything else, myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
From the WorldTour to Pidcock\u2019s Q36.5 team<\/p>\n
Badilatti was a relatively late arrival to the professional peloton, stepping up with Israel Cycling Academy after establishing himself on the continental scene with Team Vorarlberg. He remained with the Israel project as it moved into the WorldTour before joining Groupama-FDJ for 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n
He completed the 2020 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a and 2021 Giro d\u2019Italia during that period before becoming one of the original riders in the new Q36.5 project in 2023.<\/p>\n
That move also brought the only professional victory of his career, on stage six of the 2023 Tour du Rwanda. Badilatti finished fifth overall at the Tour of T\u00fcrkiye later that season and was still capable of producing strong results at WorldTour level the following year, taking 15th overall at the 2024 Tour de Suisse.<\/p>\n
As Q36.5 developed, Badilatti increasingly provided experience and climbing support rather than chasing results of his own. Pidcock\u2019s arrival for 2025 raised the level and ambitions of the Swiss ProTeam, with Badilatti remaining part of the squad through both of the Briton\u2019s first two seasons.<\/p>\n
The pair were together in the Q36.5 line-up at the Coppa Agostoni earlier this month, where Pidcock finished 18th and Badilatti did not finish. Badilatti then started the Coppa Bernocchi the following day, his most recent race appearance.<\/p>\n
Looking back on the years that took him from a late start in the sport to Grand Tours and the WorldTour, Badilatti said cycling had given him \u201cvictories and disappointments\u201d, along with experiences he would carry beyond his racing career.<\/p>\n
\u201cBehind every result there is much more than a number or a position in the standings,\u201d he wrote, pointing to \u201cdifficult days, sacrifices, doubts, crashes, fresh starts\u201d and the repeated choice to continue.<\/p>\n
Difficult final seasons precede retirement<\/p>\n
Badilatti struggled throughout 2025 without initially understanding why his performances had fallen away, despite training numbers suggesting his physical condition should have allowed more.<\/p>\n
Extensive testing eventually traced the problem to his position on the bike. Speaking to Swiss broadcaster RTR in May, Badilatti explained that he had been recruiting the wrong muscles and was unable to access his full physical capacity as efforts became harder.<\/p>\n
Correcting the position did not produce an immediate return to his previous level. Badilatti said he had to unlearn established movement patterns and retrain his body, while another difficult spring in 2026 led him to reset his approach and focus on that process.<\/p>\n
He returned to racing later in the season, but there was no repeat of the form that had carried him to 15th at the Tour de Suisse two years earlier. His final campaign ultimately ended without a top-level resurgence before Friday\u2019s retirement announcement.<\/p>\n
Badilatti thanked his family and friends, teammates, team management, staff and sponsors for accompanying him through both the successful and more difficult periods. \u201cWithout you, none of it would have been possible and, above all, it would not have been the same,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The Swiss rider has not yet revealed what will follow his racing career, describing retirement as the beginning of a new adventure. His departure also brings to an end a four-season association with Q36.5 for one of the riders who had been part of the project since its inaugural 2023 campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cCycling has taken me far, allowed me to discover places, meet people and experience worlds that I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,148137,101,44575,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-805268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-pinarello-q36-5-pro-cycling-team","tag-sports","tag-tom-pidcock","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805268","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=805268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}