Where can I buy Tom Pidcock's tyres? A video of the Briton's incredible descent

Genuine question: where can I buy Tom Pidcock's tyres? On stage 12 of the Tour de France, with the breakaway a few minutes up the road and seemingly established, Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) attacked soon after the peloton crested the top of the Col du Galibier. On the 17km descent that followed, the 22-year-old Briton gave the Tour de France - and in turn, its millions of viewers - a lesson in bike handling. He also gave his tyre sponsor a marketing story to tell for years to come. 

Tom Pidcock appeared to defy the known limits of tyre grip as he flew down the descent, and within 4km, he had carved 35 seconds of an advantage over the peloton. Soon after, he shot around the outside of Matis Louvel (Arkea Samsic) and quickly caught Chris Froome, who had attacked some 5km before him. His ability to read the road, hit every apex and use every centimetre of the road to gain free seconds was labelled by many as mesmerising. 

Pidcock is the current reigning Olympic XC mountain bike champion and elite men's world cyclo-cross champion, so a 17km tarmac descent off the Col du Galibier is probably a walk in the park to him. His bike handling and descending capabilities are naturally elevated - and well known - but that doesn't take anything away from how impressive a ride it was. Don't believe us? Just head to the bottom of this article and watch the video. 

What tyres was Pidcock using?

To go back to the earlier question of Pidcock's tyres, he was using Continental's latest performance race tyre, the GP5000 S TR. These were launched in October 2021, and in the weeks prior, had been ridden by Sonny Colbrelli to Paris Roubaix victory and by Filippo Ganna to his win in the time trial world championships. 

In recent years, Ineos Grenadiers have been steadfast in using tubular wheels and tyres whenever the race hit the mountains, primarily due to a keen focus on keeping the weight of the bike as close to the UCI limit of 6.8kg. However, thanks to the introduction of new Pinarello Dogma F bikes, the whole team is committed to tubeless tyres for 2022. 

Unfortunately, we don't know what width of tyre Pidcock was using, nor do we know what tyre pressures he was running. However, we know that he was using Shimano's Dura-Ace C36 tubeless wheels, which have an internal width of 21mm. Using Zipp's tyre calculator and the assumption that he ran the most common 25c width, we can assume that he would have been running pressures between 67PSI (4.7 bar) and 72PSI (5 bar).

As for where you can buy them, here are the best deals we can find online right now:

Video: Pidcock's daredevil descent