Pidcock finished second at Tre Valli Varesine on Tuesday, 6 October, outsprinted on the line by 20-year-old Jarno Widar of Lotto-Intermarché. His anger afterwards was not about the sprint.

A police motorbike had ridden the wrong way down the course and ploughed into two of his Pinarello-Q36.5 teammates, Marcel Camprubi and Thomas Gloag. Camprubi was able to get back on his bike. Gloag abandoned and later received stitches in his knee.

Pidcock, speaking to Eurosport after the race, made the incident the first thing he wanted to address.

“A police motorbike was going the wrong way down the course and crashed into two of our guys. So from this point… well, first of all I wanted to stop racing myself. I was mad. The guys all riding in front of me, for me, and two of them on the floor.”

Read also: Rune’s return lands him in Shelton’s section at Shanghai

He also said that “things like this shouldn’t happen.”

A race Widar still won on the line

The Italian one-day race in the hills around Varese came down to a three-up sprint. Widar, in his first season as a pro, jumped Pidcock and American Matteo Jorgenson of Visma-Lease a Bike for his first professional win.

Pidcock’s second place is one of his strongest results of the autumn block, but the Q36.5 leader kept returning in his post-race comments to the moment his teammates went down rather than to the finish.

Rider safety ahead of Il Lombardia

Vehicle incidents inside the race convoy have been one of the most sensitive topics in professional cycling in recent seasons, with motorbikes and support cars repeatedly blamed for crashes involving riders. A police outrider travelling against the direction of a WorldTour-level peloton is unusual enough to carry straight into the sport’s safety debate, days out from the season’s final monument.

Read also: Fred: ‘It was chaos’, inside Man Utd’s plane when Ronaldo’s interview dropped

Pidcock, who has been one of the sport’s more vocal voices on rider safety, framed the Tre Valli incident as something that should not have been possible inside a race convoy.

Pinarello-Q36.5 did not immediately publish a full medical update on Gloag beyond the knee stitches already confirmed in the Eurosport interview.

The peloton moves on quickly. The final monument of the season, Il Lombardia, is scheduled for Saturday, 10 October, with Pidcock expected to be on the start line in Bergamo.

Read also: FIFA rocked by World Cup storm after secret eligibility ruling emerges