OTLEY star Tom Pidcock, the Olympic mountain bike racing gold medallist, became world champion on Sunday night in the USA at the 2022 World Cyclo-cross Championships.

The Yorkshireman attacked on lap four of nine, using the steep off-camber section that saw many riders caught out as his arena to do so, sprinting past Michael Vanthourenhout (Belgium) to distance himself from the rest of the field.

Pidcock never looked back from that moment onwards, establishing within two laps a lead of over 30 seconds to a chasing bunch of five riders. No one would see his rear wheel again as he pressed on to win Britain’s first ever men’s elite cyclo-cross world championship title.

An Olympic and now world champion expect more to come from Pidcock, who will be wearing his world champion rainbow colours on the road in the forthcoming spring classics in Europe.

He truly is a sporting great in the making and he and Lizzie Deignan certainly give the town of Otley plenty to be proud of on two wheels.

Post-race, he said: “It’s a relief – [the race] was always going to be super hard. The drier it became, the more tactics play a part. The Belgians were trying to ride a tactical race.

“But yeah, I went out there as if I was going to war and I was having none of it. I found my opportunity and I made it stick.”

Asked whether he will go on to try win the mountain bike and road cycling world championships in the same year, he said, “Well it’s not gone down the drain this year so far has it!”