"He'll pass me soon, but luckily he was also at his limit" - Mads Pedersen describes intense sprint that led to Deutschland Tour win

Lidl are sponsoring the Deutschland Tour this year and so there was definitely a preference for the team to send it's leaders to Germany. Jonathan Milan won the first two stages of the race; and at first opportunity Mads Pedersen achieved the same on stage 2 by taking the win on a hilly day.

“Today was more of a day for me than the previous two days. Those were more for Johnny (Jonathan Milan, ed.). With Lidl as the main sponsor here, we want to win as much as possible. We succeeded again today" the Dane said in a post-race interview. “The heat is not extreme, but I think it comes as a surprise to many that the temperature does not really drop all day. Then you are slowly starting to break down, but you never know when it will happen. Then it is ideal to be at the front all day".

The American team led the race into it's third day and Pedersen showed the good form he was hoping for. On the hilly course he showed his best climbing legs and was able to separate from the peloton together with Tobias Johannessen and Archie Ryan of EF. “We know that a course with a climb like today suits me well. It does not make the finale too difficult, but also not too easy. The last few meters of climbing also suit me well.”

In the final sprint he was, naturally, taking over the responsibility in the leadout, which made it more difficult at the end. A grueling sprint between him and Johannessen followed and he just barely managed to succeed. "It still wasn't easy, because Johannessen came up quite quickly from the left. I thought: he'll pass me soon, but luckily he was also at his limit." Because of this win, he surged as the new overall leader of the race.