Tom Pidcock is swapping road slicks for knobbies this month

This article originally appeared on Velo News

The same day that his Ineos Grenadiers teammates roll out of Budapest during the first stage of the Giro d’Italia, Tom Pidcock will line up in Albstadt, Germany at the second cross-country mountain bike World Cup of the season.

Pidcock, the reigning Olympic MTB champion, will race short track on Friday and XCO on Sunday at the notoriously fast course in southwest Germany.

Although Pidcock had been in line for a possible Giro d'Italia debut at the start of the season, he was seen on a Tour de France recon recently, prompting speculation that he might race the French grand tour in July.

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Pidcock’s foray back to mountain biking after winning the Olympic race comes on the heels of a mixed spring classics campaign with Ineos in which the 22-year-old finished fifth behind teammate Magnus Sheffield at Brabantse Pijl and secured third place at Dwars door Vlaanderen.

His classics performances came off the back of a wildly successful cyclocross season, in which the young Brit landed on five World Cup podiums and won the rainbow stripes.

During the month of May, Pidcock will be showing off yet another one of his skillsets on the World Cup cross-country circuit. First up is Albstadt, the second World Cup of 2022, with the season-opening in Petropolis, Brazil a month ago. World champ Nino Schurter took home the win from South America and will be on the start line in Germany this weekend.

Pidcock will also line up with last year’s Abstadt winner Victor Koretzky and American superstar and short track world champion Christopher Blevins.

The following weekend, Pidcock will travel to the Czech Republic to race on the notorious Nove Mesto track. Although it’s considered one of the most technical on the World Cup circuit, this didn’t bother Pidcock last year -- the 22-year-old won the XCO race and placed second in the short track. In 2020, he won both races in Nove Mesto as a U23 rider and also snagged two sets of rainbow stripes -- Pidcock was the U23 XCO world champ as well as the elite e-MTB world champ.

The racing unfolds on Friday at 6:30 p.m. CET/12:30 p.m. EST on RedBull TV.

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