"I work my ass off to win and I don’t do this for anyone else" - Mads Pedersen eager for 'ridiculous' Paris-Roubaix

Mads Pedersen crashed just over two months ago, suffering fractures in a collarbone and wrist on opposite sides. Logic would dictate that riding cobbled classics within month and a half at a high level would be near impossible, but the Dane has done it. Now, he looks to cap off his spring campaign with a result on Paris-Roubaix, a race he dreams of winning.

“I was lying on my stomach and I tried to push myself up by putting my hands on the ground, but I couldn’t. Straight away they came to me because I was face down," Pedersen recalled in a press release. This happened on the first day of the Volta a Comunitat Valenciana, which he chose as an alternative to start off his 2026 season.

"The crash was on Wednesday and on Friday I had the operation. By Saturday evening I was on the phone to my coach and I told him: ‘Okay, how are we going to make it back?’ He told me to take it easy at first and we’d do whatever we could do. The problem was I had the left arm in a cast to my shoulder and the right collarbone was broken. I had pain in my back from lifting the cast all the time, it was so heavy".

Recovering in time looked to be an unlikely prospect, with his injuries simply being too severe to train out on the road for several weeks. What this meant was that Pedersen ended up staying an extended period of time training indoors, and a lot of his preparation came from those grueling weeks.

“I think I get this from my mum. She’s a tough woman. I think it’s in her genes, I got most of it between me and my brothers. I think it comes from the toughness of my mum and seeing her commitment to life. Even at an older age she has started to do new studying and achieve new goals which is something nice to see from a woman who is 50-years-old spending her time like that. I hate it when people feel sorry for themselves, it’s just horrible.”

Pedersen then made his return to the peloton at Milano-Sanremo where he finished fourth. There was still a big hurdle which were racing in hand-jarring cobbled sectors and having multiple max efforts, which was the case at the E3 Saxo Classic. He finished ninth, proving he could be competitive.

Then followed a 10th place at Dwars door Vlaanderen and a fifth at the Tour of Flanders, where he looked back in peak form. Roubaix is a race that suits him better, lacking the climbs where Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel would ordinarily be able to make the difference, and Lidl-Trek has a more even field.

“When I am racing, I’m the one who puts the most pressure on myself. I want to win, I work my ass off to win and I don’t do this for anyone else. I’m not doing it to make my parents or wife happy. I really couldn’t care. It’s a goal for me,” he explains. “Maybe that’s my big ego or self-confidence but it really is me that motivates me. On the way to success, you also have to fail and maybe you fail under pressure, but I learn from that.”

He is backed by a team of literal heavyweights with Jonathan Milan, Max Walscheid, Jakob Söderqvist, Soren Kragh Andersen, Mathias Vacek, Mathias Norsgaard and Edward Theuns. It is a brutal race where he has finished third in the past two editions.

This Sunday, he can improve on that third place. “Roubaix is ruthless, it’s tough, and that’s what attracts me to it. It’s stupid, it makes no sense, but sometimes I like what is not normal. It’s a ridiculous race, and that’s why it fits me.”