Tom Pidcock marked his return to road cycling with victory in Larciano
Tom Pidcock returned to road racing in a way that once again highlighted how successfully he moves between different cycling disciplines. The Briton from the Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team won the 48th edition of the Gran Premio Industria & Artigianato di Larciano on 6 September, a one-day race held in Tuscany, just seven days after claiming the Olympic cross-country mountain bike world title in Val di Sole. According to his team's official report, he launched the decisive attack on the final ascent of Mungherino, within the last 13 kilometres of the approximately 196.5-kilometre race. After breaking away from his rivals, he maintained his advantage over the summit of the climb and on the descent towards Larciano, reaching the finish alone in Piazza Vittorio Veneto. The victory confirmed that the transition from mountain biking to road cycling did not require a long period of adaptation this time.
Pidcock finished the race in 4 hours, 33 minutes and 8 seconds. Italian Christian Scaroni of XDS Astana Team took second place, 12 seconds behind, while Dane Anthon Charmig of Uno-X Mobility was third in the chasing group with the same time gap. According to the official results and race reports, Roger Adrià, Alessandro Fancellu, Antonio Tiberi and Thomas Gachignard also finished in the same group, while Mathys Rondel, in eighth place, was 18 seconds behind. Ben O'Connor was ninth and Romain Grégoire tenth. Such an outcome showed how precisely timed Pidcock's move in the finale was: the gap was not large, but after his attack the chasers were no longer able to re-establish contact.
Attack on Mungherino decided the race
The Gran Premio Industria & Artigianato is traditionally raced on rolling and selective terrain around Larciano, a town in the Italian region of Tuscany. The 2026 edition featured almost 200 kilometres of racing, with multiple climbs that gradually reduced the main group before the final showdown. According to data from Team Cofidis and organisers' reports carried by Italian cycling media, the riders repeatedly tackled the San Baronto climb during the second part of the route, around 8.2 kilometres long with an average gradient of approximately 3.5 percent. The final key obstacle was Mungherino, a climb of about 6.2 kilometres averaging close to six percent, demanding enough at the end of a long one-day race to separate the best climbers and explosive classics specialists. It was there that Pidcock decided he would not wait for a sprint from a smaller group.
The race opened with an early breakaway, and according to Tuttobiciweb's report, nine riders managed to build a noticeable advantage over the peloton during the first phase. As the laps and climbs accumulated, the gap was reduced, and in the final thirty kilometres or so a new group formed at the front that included, among others, Ben O'Connor, Anthon Charmig, Ion Izagirre and Pidcock's teammate Quinten Hermans. Pinarello Q36.5 took responsibility at the head of the peloton during the day, and after the race the team particularly highlighted Hermans' role in responding to attacks by rivals. This allowed Pidcock to remain protected until the moment when he judged that an attack would be most effective. When he accelerated on the final climb, he quickly passed the remaining riders ahead of him and continued alone towards the finish.
According to the organisers' report carried by BiciTV, the Briton broke away approximately 12.5 kilometres from the finish and had around a 20-second advantage over his nearest pursuers at the summit. On the descent he did not allow the group to come back, although the gap narrowed in the final kilometres. Scaroni secured second place from the group behind him, while Charmig finished third. Pidcock thus avoided a scenario in which victory would be decided by a sprint, something he also described after the race as one of the logical tactical approaches on a course like this: victory had to be sought either from a very small group or with a solo attack. In his case, the second option proved completely successful.
Seven days from world gold to a road victory
The result carries particular significance because Pidcock did not have the usual road-racing rhythm between the two major successes. On Sunday, 30 August, he won the elite Olympic cross-country world title at the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Val di Sole, also in Italy. The championship organisers and Cyclingnews report that he started from the fifth row, in 35th position, but worked his way towards the front during the race and in the finale dropped his national-team colleague Charlie Aldridge. He reached the finish 17 seconds ahead of Aldridge and thus claimed his second elite XCO world title, following his previous gold medal in 2023. That result further strengthened his status as one of the most successful multidisciplinary cyclists of his generation.
Pidcock also already has two Olympic gold medals in mountain biking. He won at the Tokyo Games, officially listed as Tokyo 2020, and defended the title in Paris in 2024. Alongside his mountain-bike titles, he has also won the highest honours in cyclocross during his career, while on the road he has for years combined stage races, classics and championships. Precisely because of such breadth, his calendar often looks different from the programmes of riders who stick to only one discipline throughout the season. The victory in Larciano showed that this time his short transition between technically and physiologically different racing formats succeeded without any visible loss of form.
After the finish, Pidcock admitted that he had come to Tuscany primarily to rediscover the feel of road racing after weeks focused on mountain biking. In a statement published by his team, he emphasised that the effort in XCO races differs significantly from the demands of a road race and that after changing disciplines he sometimes needs time to adapt. This time, however, the adjustment was almost immediate. He also highlighted the exceptionally hot conditions and the work of the entire team, especially Hermans, who responded to attacks in the crucial part of the race. Such a statement further explains why the victory was not merely the result of a single explosive move, but also of a tactically controlled approach throughout much of the day.
Fifth road victory of the season and continuation of a strong 2026
The triumph in Larciano was, according to several specialised cycling sources, Pidcock's fifth road victory of the 2026 season and the 15th road victory of his professional career. During the year he had already won in different types of races, and the success in Tuscany came after an important summer block in which he also competed in the Tour de France. His team states that he finished the Tour on 26 July in ninth place overall, which was also the Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team's first participation in the biggest French stage race. After that, he switched back to mountain biking and prepared for the World Championships in Val di Sole.
Such a sequence of results is also important because of the way Pidcock is building towards the closing part of the season. Instead of a longer return through several road races, in Larciano he immediately showed that he could respond to attacks, follow the pace on long climbs and then make the difference with his own acceleration. In one-day races this is particularly important because riders often have only one opportunity for a decisive move. His combination of explosiveness, descending technique and ability on short and medium-length climbs makes him dangerous on profiles where the race is decided in the final twenty kilometres or so. In Tuscany all those characteristics came together in a result achieved at a moment when the most important road objectives of the closing part of the year are approaching.
For Pinarello Q36.5, the victory also has additional symbolism because Pidcock was competing in the Gran Premio Industria & Artigianato for the first time. According to the team's report, the race traces its roots to the local Circuito di Larciano from 1967, while the Gran Premio Industria & Artigianato was established as a separate race in 1977 and has been part of the UCI ProSeries calendar since 2020. The list of winners includes numerous major names in road cycling, among them Felice Gimondi, Roger De Vlaeminck, Francesco Moser, Giuseppe Saronni, Vincenzo Nibali, Adam Yates, Matej Mohorič and Marc Hirschi. With his victory, Pidcock became another prominent name in that history and, according to the organisers' report, only the second British winner after Adam Yates, who won in 2014 and 2017.
Larciano as preparation for the Canadian classics and World Championships
The victory in Italy comes ahead of Pidcock's planned trip to Canada. According to the current calendar of the Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team, he is due to compete in the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec on 11 September and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal on 13 September. Both races are part of the UCI WorldTour and traditionally bring together riders who handle repeated climbs and explosive finishes well. That makes them natural preparation races for this year's Road World Championships, which will take place in Montréal from 20 to 27 September. Cyclingnews reported after his mountain-bike world title that the Canadian block had been selected as the final preparation for an attempt to achieve a major result at the road championships.
The UCI announced that the men's elite road race at the World Championships will be held on 27 September on a 273.7-kilometre course with approximately 3,803 metres of climbing. The start is scheduled in Brossard, south of Montréal, after which the peloton will travel through the Montérégie area before reaching the final circuit around Mont Royal. The men will face 12 laps, with the main obstacles including Voie Camillien-Houde, Chemin de la Polytechnique with sections steeper than 11 percent, and the climb towards the finish on Avenue du Parc. Much of that final circuit is familiar from the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, so competing in the WorldTour race two weeks earlier will provide a direct test of the terrain and form. The profile is long, rolling and demanding enough to reward riders who can combine endurance with short, powerful accelerations.
Pidcock's best result so far in the elite road race at the World Championships is sixth place from Leuven in 2021, according to data cited by Cyclingnews. A road world title therefore remains one of the few biggest titles still missing from his multidisciplinary collection. Nevertheless, victory in Larciano by itself does not guarantee a similar result in Montréal: the World Championships will be considerably longer, with greater cumulative elevation gain and a different tactical dynamic involving national teams. It does, however, provide a very fresh indicator of form and confirms that after mountain biking he has retained his ability for long road efforts. That is precisely why his performance in Tuscany has a broader significance than simply another victory in a one-day race.
Italian race once again attracted strong international competition
The Gran Premio Industria & Artigianato has occupied a special place in the Italian calendar for decades because it combines local tradition with an international professional peloton. Recent editions have regularly produced winners from different countries and top-level teams. Before Pidcock, the winners were Isaac del Toro in 2025, Marc Hirschi in 2024, Ben Healy in 2023 and Diego Ulissi in 2022, further illustrating the type of rider this race often rewards: strong enough for repeated climbs, but also capable of reacting tactically in the finale. This year's standings, with riders such as Scaroni, Charmig, Adrià, Tiberi, O'Connor and Grégoire among the top ten, once again confirmed the high level of competition.
For Italian road cycling, the race in Larciano also marked the beginning of an intense September series of one-day and regional races. After Pidcock's victory, ANSA highlighted that the programme in Tuscany immediately continues with the Giro della Toscana on 9 September and Coppa Sabatini on 10 September. According to his team's published schedule, Pidcock switches his focus to the Canadian races after Larciano, but his success further raised the international visibility of the Italian part of the calendar. For the organisers, it is particularly valuable that the winner is the reigning mountain-bike world champion and a two-time Olympic champion, a rider whose name attracts audiences beyond the traditional circle of road-cycling followers.
The most important message from the race, however, remains a sporting one. On 30 August in Val di Sole, Pidcock had to recover positions from deep in the starting order and win on a technically demanding XCO course, while only a week later in Larciano he completed more than four and a half hours of road racing before launching a solo attack in the finale. The two successes required different distributions of effort, different tactics and completely different racing rhythms. It is precisely that ability to adapt that is one of the characteristics setting him apart in modern professional cycling. Ahead of Québec, Montréal and the Road World Championships, the victory in Tuscany showed that he entered the September part of the season with form that once again places him among the riders his rivals will have to watch carefully.
Sources:
- Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team – official report on Pidcock's victory in Larciano, team tactics, the result and his programme (link)
- Val di Sole Bikeland – report by the organisers of the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships on Pidcock's XCO title (link)
- UCI – official information on the 2026 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships and the context of the elite XCO race in Val di Sole (link)
- UCI – official overview of the Montréal 2026 Road World Championships course, including the distance, elevation gain and finishing circuit of the men's elite race (link)
- ANSA – report on the victory in Larciano and the continuation of the September cycling programme in Tuscany (link)
- BiciTV – report from the 48th edition of the Gran Premio Industria & Artigianato, details of the final attack and the standings of the leading riders (link)
- Cyclingnews – reports on the victory in Larciano, the XCO world title and Pidcock's plan for the Canadian races and Road World Championships (link)
- Team Cofidis – information on the race distance and repeated climbs of San Baronto in the final part of the route (link)
- Tuttobiciweb – chronology of the early breakaway, final attacks and official standings of the race in Larciano (link)