Tom Pidcock winning a big cross-country mountain bike title on the Pinarello Dogma XC full-suspension bike – developed just for him – isn’t really news. It’s been happening pretty consistently for the past few years, since the bike’s debut. But as always, this time his World Championship-winning bike setup is a bit unique, including some super-secret prototype wheels with fiber spokes, and a few other interesting tidbits. But really, it was probably Vittoria’s headline that sold me on diggin’ deeper: “Pidcock wins Worlds on Peyote“.
Totally true, by the way. Let’s explain it all…
2026 XC World Champion Tom Pidcock on Pinarello Dogma XC
First, yes. Tom Pidcock did just win his second Elite Men’s UCI XCO Mountain Bike World Championship title. And that’s a photo of him racing a road bike in Paris. Because, what’s maybe most impressive about him winning his second set of MTB rainbow stripes on his Pinarello Dogma XC, is that we haven’t seen him racing cross-country much this season. In fact, just weeks ago he was a road pro. It was less than 5 weeks before winning XC Worlds that Pidcock was finishing the Tour de France in 9th place on a different Pinarello Dogma. You know, the road one.
Also, a closer look at his XC bike reveals that his setup has shifted quite a lot this season. Out with the automated suspension he raced since his 2021 Olympic Gold win in Tokyo, in with an all-new setup from Q36.5 sponsor SRAM.
Now racing RockShox Flight Attendant, not SR Suntour TACT
Since sometime last season, now that he’s on the Pinarello-Q36.5 team, sponsored by SRAM, Pidcock has been racing on RockShox Ultimate Flight Attendant suspension. What makes this unique is that Pidcock was an early adopter of automated suspension control, having helped SR Suntour develop their own TACT auto system. A system without any backup controls on the bike, completely requiring the racer to trust that it is making the right decisions to control suspension damping.
Pidcock actually won his Tokyo Gold on a TACT prototype, the year before Pinarello unveiled their first XC mountain bike for him to race. And raced exclusively on it ever since. We suspected that SR Suntour would have already brought it to the consumer market by now. We were teased that 2023/2024 was going to be the season. Having Pidcock as the ideal promoter of how well it works, without any input required would have been perfect. But it never came.
RockShox‘s Flight Attendant, on the other hand, has plenty of flashing lights visible directly on the top of the right fork leg. Riders can manually change settings on the fly. And although Pidcock often doesn’t race MTB with a cycling computer, Flight Attendant now also offers excellent integration with Hammerhead head units.
Clearly, it works well for Tom Pidcock’s needs.
Pidcock Racing on Peyote
Back to the double entendre of Pidcock racing on Vittoria tires named after a small psychedelic cactus… Yes, he’s been racing cross-country on Vittoria’s fast-rolling 29 x 2.4″ Peyote tires with lightweight Air-Liner Light XC tire liners inside, front & rear.
Pidcock has been training on unlabeled rear Peyotes since the start of the year (like we see below), suggesting there may be some new rubber or casing construction changes being tested. But for race day at Worlds last weekend, he rocked up with standard Peyote hot patches. Although, they were still labeled as ‘Vitoria Labs’ tires, with the same handwritten capital I marking them as something special.
Prototype carbon wheels with fiber spokes from FSA?
More interesting than drug-named tires, are the unlabeled prototype wheels on which they were mounted. Officially, Pidcock’s Pinarello-Q36.5 team races on Zipp wheels. But these aren’t Zipp wheels.
Tom Pidcock is an unrepentant wheel nerd and weight weenie. His fixation on ultralight wheels even led Princeton Carbon to create the P1 Race Tech wheels for him and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, both of whom won Gold on them. These are also not P1 wheels.
A rumor in the pits at Worlds suggests that they are, in fact, unreleased prototype FSA wheels. But when I asked FSA directly, they wouldn’t confirm it.
Any labels or logos have been covered up, so we can’t be sure. But the hub shape does look similar to current KFX wheels. Yet, what really caught my attention were the spokes.
Tom Pidcock’s logo-covered prototype wheels are apparently built with 24 Berd PolyLight fiber spokes front and rear. The Berd spokes include a ~5-6cm long section of conventional metal spoke, bonded inside the end that lets them fit standard rim drilling. And at the hub, they have a loop & rod that fits into conventional hub drilling, too. Berd says their UHMWPE spokes shave anywhere from 30-50% of the weight of regular spokes, while increasing strength and damping.
While we did see Pidcock racing Zipp-labeled wheels in the Nove Mesto XCO World Cup race, also with fiber spokes. I also spotted him racing XCC with these same unlabeled rims, which may turn out to be a next-gen FSA prototype.
Cockpit by Most & Prologo
Pidcock’s race bike features a light & stiff 1-piece MOST XC MTB cockpit from Pinarello’s own component brand. To that he mounts some lightweight ESI foam grips and a couple of Pod Rocker controllers for the short 100mm RockShox Reverb AXS dropper and SRAM XX SL AXS Eagle wireless Transmission. Plus, SRAM Motive Ultimate brakes. It’s definitely an uncluttered cockpit, and even the top cap-mounted GPS mount came off for the big race.
Finally, he sits atop Prologo’s grippy Scratch NDR XC saddle with Nack carbon rails, slammed back on the rails like a roadie.
The rest of his Pinarello Dogma XC is much like the bike I tested 2 years ago in Pidcock’s own gold & rainbow livery. No, Euro champ or past rainbow stripe paint jobs for Worlds, Pinarello gave him a tasteful white & light blue fade with speckles and red logos to match his GB Cycling Team national kit. It’s surprisingly short travel for an XC bike these days – just 90mm in the rear with Pidcock running the shorter 45mm stroke shock. Although it does seem that he pairs it with a 110mm SID SL fork here. But clearly, that was still plenty for Tom Pidcock.
