Tom Pidcock claims he is ‘not good enough’ to win Tour de France in 2023, targets stage wins

Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) wrote off his own hopes of winning the yellow jersey at the 2023 Tour de France before the first pedal stroke, telling Eurosport he was “not good enough” to top the general classification.

Defending champion Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) and Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) are the runaway favourites for this year’s race, having won the last three editions between them.

“Of course I want to try and win,” said Pidcock after being asked whether he was targeting GC or stages.

“I’m not good enough to win the GC this year, I can tell you that. But I want to try and win some stages and then see what happens on GC.

“Maybe at one point we’ll switch tactics and go solely for stages.”

Ineos, previously Team Sky, once dominated the peloton at the Tour de France, winning the yellow jersey for five straight years from 2015 to 2019 through Chris Froome and Bernal.

“For Ineos this could be a very different scenario for them – stage hunting, not a GC leader, not a chance of the yellow jersey in my eyes,” said Blythe.

“They’ve always had a leader, they’ve always had ambitions to get the yellow jersey, but this year I would say the ambition is between top five and top 10, after that I am not too sure.

“You have Tom Pidcock, who might try and stay up there on GC just for the learning process to see what it’s like. But he is a proper bike racer and will want to go stage hunting and getting the glory which I hope he does, I hope he doesn’t get too bogged down with the GC.

“Bernal, I don’t think he will do anything in the GC, I don’t think he’s at that level yet. The other guys in the team… I think top 10 would be great.”

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