Tom Pidcock retained his Olympic cross-country title at Élancourt Hill, beating Victor Koretzky by nine seconds. He becomes only the second man ever to win back-to-back Olympic XCO golds, after Julien Absalon.
Puncture drops him to ninth
The race turned on lap four. Pidcock had taken the lead through the forest section, but a punctured front tyre sent him back to ninth place. He lost roughly 37 seconds while his mechanic made a fast change in the pits.
He began climbing back immediately. By the sixth lap he sat third, half a second behind Koretzky. The gap narrowed to five seconds at the penultimate lap.
One corner decides gold
The decisive move came in the final lap's wooded section. Pidcock shot up the inside of a left-hand corner, choosing a line that forced Koretzky to check his speed. The two nearly collided on the descent, but Pidcock emerged with a gap he would not surrender.
He crossed the line in 1:26:22, nine seconds clear. Alan Hatherly took bronze eleven seconds back, South Africa's first Olympic mountain bike medal. A crowd of fifteen thousand had roared for Koretzky and met the winning move with boos.
"I did nothing wrong," Pidcock told reporters afterwards. "The gap was there so I was going." He added: "But you know they didn't boo the rock that gave me a puncture did they."
The ride carried extra weight after his preparation was disrupted by Covid-19, which forced his withdrawal from the Tour de France weeks earlier. A five-year journey from youngest Olympic MTB champion to battle-hardened double gold medallist was complete.
