"I hope it angered him a little" - 'Climber' Mads Pedersen beats Jorgenson and friend João Almeida up summit finish at Paris-Nice

Mads Pedersen is an incredibly versatile rider, that is to no surprise. But this week, the Lidl-Trek rider has been resembling 2022 Tour de France Wout van Aert where he sprints with the best, time-trials with the best and now also climbs with the very best in the race as he outclimbed even Matteo Jorgenson on today's summit finish.

"I think this bad weather is helping me a lot. When it's so cold, with snow here at the summit, it's definitely better for me; it works in my favor. In the end, I wanted to score as many points (for the points classification, ed.) as possible, and I ended up completely pushing myself," Pedersen explained in a post-race interview. "It was actually very good training! Tomorrow, Jorgenson will be in the running, so it's going to be really tough, but I'm going to give it my all to keep the green jersey."

Whilst he suffers with the cold, he is a rider that thrives in these horrible weather conditions. He has spent several stages being absolutely key to Mattias Skjelmose's overall classification stint, but the third placed rider crashed out of the race today.

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"As for Mattias, I don't know what happened. I was coming back from a natural need stop, and I heard on the radio that Skjelmose had crashed. I saw him on the ground, there wasn't much I could do," he explains. "I asked him how he was, and he was in a lot of pain. At that point, I had to leave and let the others take care of him. It's really not pleasant... He had a great race so far and we were hoping for a good weekend for him. It's a real shame to lose him in a crash like that. Now, I just hope it's nothing too serious and that he can come back quickly".

Pedersen returned to the peloton and then on the climb to Auron, after showing instances of great climbing form earlier in the week, put on the climb of his career. He finished 10th on the day, fifth out of the GC contenders, ahead of Matteo Jorgenson and João Almeida in the GC group.

"João is a good friend; we're with the same rider agency. He struggled a bit at the bottom of the final climb, and I did my best to try and keep him in a good position," he says, before joking about the Portuguese. "I hope seeing myself next to him gave him a little motivation. It's never cool for a climber to see a sprinter and the green jersey next to him on a climb like that. I hope it angered him a little and pushed him a little further".

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