Thomas Pidcock takes his first elite MTB cross country world championship title

Nino Schurter, the Swiss mountain bike pro and 10-time world champion in cross country, said in the run-up to the race that Pidcock was probably his biggest rival. No wonder, the Olympic champion from Great Britain, won the majority of the World Cup races in which he participated in addition to his road cycling career. And the gold medal at the 2022 Olympics was not really a surprise. When the young Brit pedals, there's no stopping him. And that he wanted to shine in front of his home audience was clear anyway. The only "obstacle" was his starting position at number 55, although the UCI leadership put him slightly ahead. Still, Pidcock started in the middle of the field. When the field started, he was not seen at the front for a long time.

A small lead group quickly formed with Nino Schurter, Alan Hatherly, Jordan Sarrou and other top riders who pulled away from the field. Nino Schurter's tactics were clear, he wanted to accelerate and break away from the peloton, but he didn't want to do the lead work alone. While the lead group pulled away from the field, Pidcock had to work his way forward through the field. In the first laps it was really questionable if he would be able to do this at all, after all there was quite a bit of pace. But after the middle of the race he had closed the gap to the leading group.

He kicked along nicely with the lead crew and you got the feeling that this catch-up chase had cost him quite a bit of energy and it was really questionable whether he would even be able to take the lead and pull away. After Pidcock took over the lead from Schurter on the fifth lap, a real fight ensued between the two. Schurter did not want to let the Briton go under any circumstances and also managed to stay on his rear wheel and also take the lead from him once again. But on the sixth lap the moment of truth struck and the young Briton was able to pull clear of Schurter and the chasing pack. Now it was a matter of increasing the distance between his opponents and him.

Meanwhile, newly crowned Short Track World Champion Samual Gaze from New Zealand and Frenchman Victor Koretzky were closing in on the chasing team of Schurter and Hatherly. Besides the work of Pidcock, the catch-up of this duo was amazing. The combative Gaze managed to pass Hatherly, Dascalu, Braidot and finally second-placed Schurter. Koretzky tried to keep up with Gaze, but had to let him and Schurter go. In the end, however, Schurter had to fight to take home a medal. Samuel Gaze even gave so much gas that he almost managed to catch up with Pidcock. Who knows how it would have looked another lap later. But at the end of lap 8, Thomas Pidcock crossed the finish line as the new world champion in mountain bike cross country, closely followed by Samuel Gaze, who now takes home a silver medal in addition to his gold medal from the short track race, and by Nino Schurter, who won a bronze medal at a world championship for the first time. An exciting, hard-fought race with a worthy winner!