Aged just 22, in only his third year as part of the WorldTour, Laurence Pithie wants to win a Monument next season.
“Shoot for the stars,” he says with a grin.
It’s undoubtedly ambitious, but this mentality has got the Groupama-FDJ rider where he is. Pithie has had to be driven, gutsy and bold to make it from his evening club time trials in Christchurch, New Zealand to the highest rungs of professional cycling, and he’s nowhere near done yet.
“I always wanted to be a professional athlete. I was always sporty but for cycling, I fully committed at the end of 2016 and the start of 2017 is when I stopped running and got a coach for cycling,” Pithie says. “Everything from there was with the goal of becoming a professional and in the WorldTour.”
The pathway to the top hasn’t been simple for Pithie - it isn’t for many riders who are required to move to Europe from the Southern Hemisphere to pursue their careers. It was on the wooden boards of the velodrome where the Kiwi rider’s talent originally came to the fore, he won two world titles as a junior on the track, something which grabbed the attention of Groupama-FDJ’s Continental team. Even when his contract with them was secured, however, the challenges continued.
“The team took a chance on me from my results on the track, but making the move to Europe was super difficult actually,” Pithie says. “I found it really hard to go from racing with 50 guys maximum in New Zealand on big, wide roads, and then coming to Europe. My first first road race was Le Samyn which is like a 1.1 and it had Van der Poel there, which was pretty intimidating. I don't think I left the back of the bunch until I pulled out of the race. I definitely was questioning myself after that if I was in the right place. But for me, it got better and it got a lot worse. I crashed a lot, which made it difficult but the team was super supportive which made it easier.”
Pithie’s plucky determination to find his place in the professional peloton wasn’t just driven from his own desire to win. He explains that he felt a duty to repay those who had helped him to have the opportunity to be in these bike races at all.
“In my mind, I didn't really have a choice. Giving up wasn't an option. There'd been so many sacrifices made with my family just to get me to Europe. If I’d have given up, it would have been a wasted opportunity,” he states.
There is an exact race that Pithie can pinpoint as the moment he felt like he was beginning to prove that he was in the right place. It was a reduced bunch sprint at the end of the 2021 edition of Circuit de Wallonie where he finished in third place behind Christophe Laporte and Marc Sarreau. The result was a sign of what was to come for Pithie: he belonged in the chaos and drama of one-day races.
“That result was huge for me. I realised I could actually race with the top guys – it was a bit of an eye opener. I got a little bit more momentum from there, and a bit more confidence,” Pithie says. “Once I learned to stay on my bike at those types of races, it became a lot easier for me and a lot more natural. Positioning is so important in those races for the key sectors and my build helps me perform better there than in the races that go up and down.”
Pithie’s results early in his career went a long way in proving to Groupama-FDJ that he is a fast learner, and the promotion to the WorldTour squad came after just two years of the 22-year-old riding for the Continental team. He explains that the vision and setup of the French outfit and the familiarity of staff and riders was a big reason for his choice to sign a contract with them.
“They were the team who gave me the opportunity when I was no one so I wanted to give back and have some loyalty to them,” Pithie adds. “It was the right decision for me to sign there and continue the adventure.”
A victory last season in French 1.1 race Cholet-Pays de la Loire meant that Pithie was once again repaying Groupama-FDJ’s belief in him, and he was selected for all of the major Classics in 2024. It’s fair to say that this season was a breakthrough one for Pithie, with a WorldTour win early in the year at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race and then an impressive showing at Paris-Nice where he podiumed in the first two stages, meaning he also wore the leader’s jersey.
“I think I made a step up because I trained super hard back home in New Zealand. It's definitely beneficial having a double summer because I could train normally, uninterrupted, and the weather was beautiful,” he reflects. “I didn’t change anything major, but I probably got a little bit older and mature. Winning at Cadel Evans definitely changed my season from there on. I wasn't expecting to win it and I think it set the standard for the rest of the season.”
Now coming to the end of the year, Pithie is able to somewhat reflect on how impressive those opening months of 2024 really were, first in Australia and then at Paris-Nice. However, he explains that it was difficult to process it at the time – his intrinsic drive to win means that podium places don’t always feel like enough.
“At the time, I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have. I was in the leader's jersey but the stage result was second or third,” he says. “It was still a disappointment because I wasn't just finishing it off on that top step. I can appreciate it more now than I could at the time, I can see how it seemed ungrateful at the time, because it was actually super nice and cool to have those moments early in the season.”
Pithie’s harsh, self-critical analysis of his results became somewhat of a trend throughout the year: he impressed with a seventh place at Paris-Roubaix, a 15th at Milan-Sanremo and multiple top-10 stage finishes at his debut Grand Tour, the Giro d’Italia, but Pithie was rarely satisfied with his performances. He’s able to quickly reel off a multitude of things he needs to work on to finish higher in races like Roubaix, from endurance, to bike-handling, to positioning, but finds it harder to reflect on his success.
“At that time of year, everything was a disappointment just because I wanted to win so badly and do well for the team and do well for everyone around me,” he says. “It was always what could have been for me, I think it’s an experience thing that I don’t really enjoy those little wins, even though if you told me at the start of the season I’d win a WorldTour race, come seventh at Roubaix, you'd wear the yellow jersey Paris-Nice, I'd sign for that straight away.”
It’s clear that Pithie puts serious pressure on himself to win. While this garners results, it also is a heavy burden to carry throughout the season. Groupama-FDJ have always respected his ambition and built a team around him for the Giro to help him fight for stage wins, but Pithie was ultimately unable to reach the top step of the podium. He explains that racing in a Grand Tour for the first time was tougher than he could have ever envisioned.
“I expected it to be hard but it's still on another level. I’ve never ridden as consistently as that because we rode on the rest days too. It was super hard and pretty tiring, I think racing for three weeks in a row should be illegal, to be honest,” Pithie laughs. “Hopefully with age, I'll start to be able to really back up each day. I think I just struggled to keep focus for that long every day. I really want to do more Grand Tours and be able to learn and grow as a rider.”
