"Jonas will win the Tour de France" - Mads Pedersen is impressed by the level of his compatriot
CyclingFriday, 13 June 2025 at 09:21
Mads Pedersen is currently resting after the successful Giro d'Italia campaign. That means he had enough time to watch his compatriot Jonas Vingegaard fly on the opening stage of Criterium du Dauphiné. Even though the brave attack wasn't rewarded with a sweer victory, the Lidl-Trek star was pleasantly surprised by the level of two-time Tour de France champion.
"It was an insane stage. It was good to see. Great to see Jonas again. He's entering Pogacar's own territory, so it could be that Tadej didn't expect this," said Pedersen in the podcast Lang Distance.
Pedersen saw that even Pogacar hesitated for a moment when Vingegaard unleashed his horses. "You can see that Tadej has the time to think: 'What the hell is happening here, what is this?' He also didn't close that gap as easily as he might have thought. You really saw him grit his teeth to close that gap. Great Jonas. Great, great, great, great," Pedersen applauds his compatriot.
Despite his effort, Vingegaard was unable to win the sprint against faster men in the group. Pedersen is not in the slightest bit concerned by that. "He has everything to gain and nothing to lose. Imagine if he had won the stage... You wouldn't have believed it with that group. Crazy, brilliant. Even though they didn't win a single second."
After seeing the level of Vingegaard, his compatriot has no doubts that the Tour de France score will be tied at 3-3 in July again. "I'll just throw it out there: Jonas wins the Tour," he sounded confidently.
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I'm not quite ready to declare Tadej DOA. But it is fantastic to see Jonas back at such good form after a lacklustre spring
We've had three stages of a race, Jonas is riding what day 4 or 5 of his season, Tadej coming off a Rest/training block after another exceptional spring... I expect a different story as we head into July
Jonas seems to be on terrific form, I can't wait for the final three stages. Tadej and Jonas will push each other and drop the entire peloton.
I'm afraid Pedersen has a point, especially seeing Vingegaard almost sprinting to a win on the first stage. I thought his strength was mostly on 1-hour+ steady climbs (and sometimes TTs).
People forgot that EVERY rider not past his peak can attain new levels and that no-one can tell when that happens. Last year Tadej and Remco did it and Tadej kind of again this spring but in a different register, this year it’s Mads, and maybe now Jonas? After the jump there is usually a plateau or even a lull before any more improvements so it’s unlikely Tadej will be even better at the Tour whereas it’s likely Jonas could be.
That said, we’ve seen Jonas being real good in TT before but this was really short and favoured others more.