Tom Pidcock leads Ineos Grenadiers at Tour de Suisse

Tom Pidcock will make his return to road racing ahead of the Tour de France as he heads up the Ineos Grenadiers selection for next week's Tour de Suisse.

The Briton will take on the eight-day race, which runs from June 11-18, for the second time as he prepares to return to the race where he soloed to a famous stage win at L'Alpe d'Huez last July.

He's joined in the Ineos Grenadiers selection by Magnus Sheffield, Michał Kwiatkowski, and Jhonatan Narváez, as well as Connor Swift, Ben Tulett, and Kim Heiduk, with several of those riders also likely to secure Tour de France selection.

Pidcock last raced on the road at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where he rounded out a successful, if concussion-interrupted, spring campaign which saw him win Strade Bianche and also finished third at the Amstel Gold Race.

Pidcock returned to mountain biking in May, winning the cross-country and cross-country short track races at the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup opener in Nové Mesto as well as the Okk Bike Revolution event in Chur a week earlier.

He then spent time working at altitude on Mount Teide ahead of the Tour de Suisse, his main preparation race for the Tour. 

Pidcock is expected to have a protected role at the Tour de FRance, with the early hilly stage in the Basque Country also an objective. He is likely to be joined by Kwiatkowski in the Tour de France team, as well as Daniel Martínez and Carlos Rodríguez, who are currently racing the Critérium du Dauphiné.

Egan Bernal, also racing in France, is in the frame to take on the Tour for the first time since his life-threatening crash at the start of 2021.

In Switzerland, Tulett and Sheffield take the start two weeks after finishing one-two at the Tour of Norway. Tulett, 21, took the first stage race victory of his career by five seconds from his teammate after winning the prologue.

The eight-day Tour de Suisse is bookended by two time trials in Einsiedeln and Abtwil, with three days in the mountains in the middle of the race playing host to the toughest stages of the week.

Both Pidcock and Tulett figure among Cyclingnews' 10 riders to watch at the Tour de Suisse, while Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) and world champion Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) are among the other big names in action at the race.