The Other Pidcock In Compiègne: Joe Pidcock Makes His Paris-Roubaix Debut For Pinarello-Q36.5 With Tom Watching From Andorra
The Pidcock name will still be on the Paris-Roubaix start sheet on Sunday morning. It just will not belong to Tom. With Tom Pidcock ruled out of the cobbles by the knee ligament injury he suffered when he hit a pothole on stage 4 of the Volta a Catalunya, his younger brother Joseph — bib 235 — will line up for Pinarello-Q36.5 in Compiègne for the first Hell of the North of his professional career. Three years and three months younger than the elder brother whose name has filled the British pages of the cycling press for half a decade, the 24-year-old will make a Monument debut on the most photographed bike-race start line of the year, on the day Tadej Pogačar can complete a Monument grand slam.
Joe Pidcock's path to a Roubaix debut has been deliberately quiet. He spent two seasons at Trinity Racing on the British Continental scene before signing for Q36.5 on Christmas Eve 2024 in a deal that raised more eyebrows for nepotism than for the performances behind it. The truth is the performances were always there. Two top-fives at the under-23 Tour of Flanders. A breakaway day at last year's Tro-Bro Léon. A 49-second solo win at Coppa San Geo in 2025 that the team's tactical board still has pinned to the wall in their Aigle service course. Roubaix, team manager Doug Ryder told reporters in Compiègne on Wednesday afternoon, was always pencilled in for 2026 — just not on this side of the team-leader brackets.
"This is not a story we wanted to write," Ryder said. "Tom's knee took the script and tore it up the day after the Volta. But Joey was on the long list anyway. He has done the recons. He knows the cobbles better than two of the Belgians on this team. The fact that he is wearing the same surname on his shoulder as the rider who would have led us is a coincidence I am not asking him to think about between now and Sunday." Ryder confirmed Joe Pidcock will ride a free role inside the eight-rider Pinarello-Q36.5 unit alongside Eddy Dunbar, Fred Wright, Thomas Gloag, Sam Bennett, Chris Harper, Davide Cimolai and Jakub Otruba — a squad assembled around the brother who is now in the team's altitude house in Andorra with his right knee in a brace.
Joe Pidcock himself spoke for the first time on the record about the call-up at the team's Wednesday afternoon press conference, sat alone behind a Q36.5 backdrop in the lobby of the Mercure Compiègne. "I rang Tom on Tuesday morning before I told anyone else," he said. "He was the first person I wanted to know. He sat on the phone for thirty seconds and didn't say anything. Then he said, Don't go on the front before sector twelve, don't follow Vermeersch when he goes, and please, please do not stop at the same Carrefour de l'Arbre family I always stop at because they will recognise the surname and lose their minds." The 24-year-old laughed. "That was the entire briefing. He is the best Roubaix coach I have ever had."
The two brothers had never previously raced together at WorldTour level before joining Q36.5 together in 2025, and have started only seventeen races as team-mates in their entire careers. Joe Pidcock has been candid in the past about the difficulty of carrying the surname — in a 2024 Cyclingnews feature he revealed an ADHD diagnosis received at twenty-one and described the experience of "having to learn everything in life at twenty-one" once medication began. The Roubaix start line is the highest stage on which the younger Pidcock has had to deliver against the comparison, and the brother whose injury opened the door is the only person in the team who has told him to stop comparing.
Pinarello-Q36.5's tactical position for Sunday is unenviable. The team's automatic invitation to the 2026 Tour de France — a line in the team's marketing material since the December title-sponsor announcement — was supposed to be underwritten by the elder Pidcock's spring of opportunity. Roubaix was never the centrepiece. With Tom out, the squad now races to keep the lights on inside the eight-rider unit, to give Bennett a chance to survive to a sprint that will not happen, and to give Joe Pidcock a finish that does not rule out a return to the race for the next decade. DS Andreas Klier in the same Wednesday press conference: "We are not racing for a result. We are racing for a relationship between Joey and this race that lasts twenty years. There is a difference."
The 24-year-old will roll out of Compiègne on Sunday morning at 11:25 with a frame number on his back that nobody outside the British cycling federation has ever paid attention to. By the time he reaches the Arenberg, Adrie van der Poel is already on record this week saying the race is "fifty-fifty" between his son and Pogačar. Joe Pidcock will not be in either of those conversations. He will not need to be. The race against the brother in Andorra, the surname on the back of the shirt, the entire weight of the season Pinarello-Q36.5 had planned around someone else — none of that is on his shoulders by Sunday afternoon. The only thing on his shoulders is the bib number of the rider who chose, in the absence of a brother, to ride the Hell of the North on its hardest possible day for the most generous possible reason.
"I will see Tom on the phone on Sunday night, whatever happens," Joe Pidcock said as he stood up to leave the Mercure lobby. "He is the best of us in this family at Roubaix. He will be the best of us at Roubaix again. This year, he is just not the best of us at Roubaix on Sunday. That is why I am here."