UCI XC World Cup: Pidcock Powers Clear For 4th Successive Nové Město na Moravě Victory
Briton Tom Pidcock put in a dominant performance at the Nové Město na Moravě stop of the 2024 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup to win for the fourth successive time there as Austrian Laura Stigger battled hard for fifth place in the women’s XCO race.
Reigning world and Olympic champion Pidcock had to bide his time on Sunday as Swiss legend Nino Schurter and Saturday’s XCC race winner Victor Koretzky broke away on the second lap to open up a lead.
Pidcock did not panic, though, and reeled them back in before attempting a break of his own on the third lap Whoopenberg main climb – succeeding a lap later to eke out a healthy gap to the pack.
He kept them at a distance for the rest of the race to bank another win and 250 points with a comfortable 32-second victory over Schurter as fellow Swiss Marcel Guerrini finished in third place.
Pidcock, 24, said: “Next time I need to practice some starts before I start on the front row. Once I got going I could try to go to the front and find my own pace. You know that’s important on this track as there are so many lines and every lap I was just taking a different line to be honest. I think I can be quite pleased with that for my first race of the year. Obviously, when you’re putting big hours in on the road, it’s quite different to come in and smash it for an hour and a half.”
In the women’s XCO race, Stigger battled for fifth behind France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prevot after her fourth place in Saturday’s XCC race just six seconds off Swiss winner Alessandra Keller.
