Pidcock Whacked with Viral Infection in Tour de France Setback

Tom Pidcock is scrambling to recover from a recent viral infection and won’t race this week’s Tour de Suisse as planned.

It’s a costly setback for the Brit as he builds toward his team’s high-profile Tour de France debut in less than three-weeks’ time.

Pidcock was due to line up alongside Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel on Wednesday for a final leg-opener at the Tour de Suisse.

Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling confirmed Tuesday he will instead pivot toward a local one-day race on Sunday to allow more time to recover from a sickness that scuppered his training camp.

“Following a small number of missed training days at the team’s altitude training camp in Sierra Nevada due to contracting a mild viral infection, the team has decided to amend Tom Pidcock’s June race program,” read the note.

“As such, the Tour of Switzerland has been removed from his race calendar to be replaced, health permitting, by the Andorra MoraBanc Classica on 21 June.”

It’s an untimely divot for Pidcock, who’s not raced on the road for more than six weeks. He only broke his racing absence mid-May to win the UCI MTB World Cup race in Nové Město in typical emphatic fashion.

Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling did not comment on how Pidcock’s illness might affect his place on the Tour de France start list.

Pidcock hopes to chase stages not GC at the Tour de France

Pidcock rode to a breakout third place at the Vuelta a España last summer, but hinted he wouldn’t try to race GC against Pogačar and the Tour de France big-4 this July.

However, he was expected to factor in the many breakaway stages scattered through Le Tour. He dropped a pack of elite climbers at Milano-Torino and placed second to only Pogačar at Milan-San Remo this spring.

“This year I’m not going with any expectations [for the Tour de France],” Pidcock said this month on the Jan Fredono podcast. “I want to race, and I want to have fun, and the rest will come.

‘If I’m not saying, ‘I want to win a stage, I want to podium, I want to be top-5,’ or whatever it is, then there is nothing to fail at,” he said.

Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling ended its update Tuesday on a positive note.

“While disappointed to miss the team’s home race, Tom has returned home to Andorra where he will continue to train and is now very much looking forward to competing on his adopted home roads around the mountains of Andorra,” read the message.