Mads Pedersen: "I managed to close him in time, take a few breaths, and then go for the sprint"

Mads Pedersen has taken his third win of the season yesterday at the Circuit Cycliste Sarthe, also the third in French territory and in stage-races this season. The Trek-Segafredo rider is carrying strong form into the stage-race that has seen a strong list of riders take to the start, and has taken advantage of his climbing prowess to resist the offensive on the opening day and take the stage win.

“Since the start of the season, it was in my plan to race this after Flanders. My coach thought it was a good idea, and I agreed. This way, I get to do more racing and then just have one training block afterward before Roubaix. It was a hard and long day, and the weather was not super nice. It was not easy as we did not have a lot of time," Pedersen said in a post-race interview.

Just a few days after his eighth place at the Tour des Flandres, Mads Pedersen travelled to France for the French stage-race with the intent of building his form towards Paris-Roubaix. Results-wise, the Dane has started off the race properly, as he managed to be in the winnning move of the opening hilly stage, and was the strongest at the sprint.

“In the beginning, I was turning a little bit but not too hard because we had Kamp in the front, and I wanted him to stay in front until the bonus seconds. When we caught them, from then on, it was hard racing all the way. The peloton was chasing us hard from behind and didn’t give us much time and that made it tough," Pedersen added.

He complimented the work of teammate Alexander Kamp who had been in the breakaway, and was a crucial piece in Trek's puzzle as they controlled the front group towards a sprint finish that would favour Pedersen: “At one point, we had 1 minute and 20 seconds, and some guys stopped working, and it went down to 30-40 seconds. People tried to attack, and Kamp covered them really well.”

“With 2kms to go I was thinking I could go on the attack instead and make the others chase. Lucas Plapp from Ineos didn’t give me a very long leash though. I got back to the group with 1.5 kms to go and recovered a bit for the sprint. The last guy [Kévin Vaquelin] attacked before the final corner with 700 meters to go and I had to close it. In that situation, there’s nothing else you can do but ride hard and hope for the best. I still believed in my sprint, even If I had to spend energy closing the gap, I thought I could still win. It was hard, but I managed to close him in time, take a few breaths, and then go for the sprint," he concluded.

Pedersen will not head into the second of four stages in the race lead, and in a good position to take the overall classification home. He will face competition, but the fact that he put time on all sprinters that will be discussing bonus seconds with him in the coming days is a big advantage.