"It will certainly have irritated him, but he is not bitter" - How Mads Pedersen is using Tour de France snub as fuel for career-best performances

At Milano-Sanremo this weekend, the two-pronged Lidl-Trek attack of Mads Pedersen and Jonathan Milan offers the team a very interesting dynamic. With both team leaders on top form too, the chances of a good result are certainly boosted. As it turns out though, the route of Pedersen's good form may actually be the fact he has been left off Lidl-Trek's provisional Tour de France lineup.

Rather than opting for a similar dual-attack strategy at the French Grand Tour later this summer, Italian powerhouse Milan has been granted sole leadership for the sprints, with Pedersen instead being sent to the Giro d'Italia, missing out on the Tour de France for the first time since 2019. "We can't keep them both happy," admits Lidl-Trek sports director Steven de Jongh to Sporza.

"Mads was of course disappointed when he heard he wouldn't be going to the Tour," continues De Jongh, although he notes how the response of the Dane has been impeccable, as proven by a career-best climbing display from Pedersen at Paris-Nice last week. "It will certainly have irritated him, but he is not bitter. You saw in Paris-Nice that it gave him a boost."

The choice to select between Pedersen and Milan for races remains a difficult one for Lidl-Trek. "There are races where one has a better chance than the other. Based on that we make choices. Milan and Pedersen accept those choices, but we always have to disappoint one of them. That is inevitable," explains De Jongh, but as mentioned, this weekend both will be in action together. "We don't see that as a problem, but as a strength. If you start a race with two men like that, you have a better chance of winning. If it doesn't work out with one rider, we always have a backup plan with the other rider."

"We have a strategy in mind. But of course we won't reveal it to the media," De Jongh laughs in conclusion. "We just hope that someone from our team will be on the top step of the podium on Saturday."