Mads Pedersen recovered from illness just in time for Classics: "He’s okay again now"
Cycling
Mads Pedersen has turbulent early months of 2025. The Dane was ill early on in the season, but at Paris-Nice his climbing legs seemed better than ever with view to anticipated Milano-Sanremo.
However, the Dane had no answer to the attack from Pogacar, Van der Poel, and Filippo Ganna on the Cipressa, which meant the 2019 world champion was never in the mix for victory. "Those three guys were simply stronger," laughed sports director Steven de Jongh in an interview with IDLProCycling.com.
As it turns out, Pedersen fell ill after Paris-Nice, where the bad weather played with both riders and organizers. Pedersen seemed to be above the thing when he climbed with the best, but ultimately the harsh conditions caught up to him too. "That took a bit of the sharpness away from him," concluded Steven De Jongh. "But he’s okay again now. So we’re happy with the condition of our team leaders."
Pedersen wasn’t the only rider on the team to fall ill. For example Daan Hoole had to sit out Brugge-De Panne. "The team is in good shape, but we’ve had some illness. Though I think most teams have dealt with sickness lately. For us, everyone is either healthy or almost fully recovered, so things are looking good."
Lidl-Trek jerseys were nowhere to be seen after Tadej Pogacar's acceleration on Cipressa even though Pedersen managed to sneak up to 7th place in the final. Not what the American team came for, but anything on top was outside their reach at the moment. "In a race like Milano-Sanremo, you can’t do as much as a team. It’s a very different race compared to what’s coming up. In the upcoming races, you can do a lot more as a collective."
Van der Poel won’t be riding Gent Wevelgem this year, but he will be at the start of the E3 Saxo Classic. Is that a rider Lidl-Trek will take special precaution for? "Of course, Mathieu will be a really tough opponent for us, but we’re going to try. We managed it last year in Gent Wevelgem, so we’re not giving up," said De Jongh.
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- He'll certainly last it and prob ride his own race, at the front 😁
leedorney31-03-2025 - Gaio Primus Caesar Roglus, Rome is waiting for you, Imperator :-)).
maria2024202431-03-2025 - And he probably wasn’t even at the limit ;-) Have to wonder how much Mads could catch up if he’d tune his physique to be as sharp as MVDPs’Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- Respect for giving Van Eetvelt credit there.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- He’s already a star for me for HAVING complained about it, the recent trend having been, let them then try to take advantage by making them sign NDAs ;-)Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- Agreed, but if it was a radio thing then all the riders should have the same story and it would be easy to call anyone out. Kind of surprised this isn’t cleared up half officially afterwards, just like the Alaphilippe divorce, seems like once something spreads on the net it kind of gets accepted that everyone wants to have their own truth so no-one bothers to contest anything that’s verifiable anymore, we all just move on.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- maybe. what makes that a LITTLE fishy is that they suddenly hit the gas and started hammering it. even mathieu, who i’ve never heard complain about ANYTHING (other than teenage girls waking him up and being spit on by belgians) was pretty hacked off about the race tactics after the split. i think he was upset for what his teammates had to do, not for the fact he ended up isolated as a result.OCexile31-03-2025
- It seems that in E3 it wasn’t legit to criticise teams that « took advantage » because there was no radio communication about the incident so they couldn’t know to slow down. Only one source so far but should be quite easy to verify.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- mads SMOKED it at ghent! love that guy. he’s just the best interview ever, always smart and hilarious and with a biting intolerance for stupidity. happy for him. just as a secondary thought, consider that mvdp beat THAT version of mads by a full minute at E3 two days ago. the gap between pog/mvdp and even tho other GREAT riders like mads is kinda staggering to comprehend. this is a time in cycling history that’s certainly worth paying attention to while it lasts.OCexile31-03-2025
- i watched the race. jasper and roodhooft have a legit anger about this. alpecin burned everyone to pull it back. they did the SAME THING after the split in E3, burning all their guys and thus leaving mathieu to fend for himself (which worked out ok because van der poel is van der poel, but still…). yeah, christopher and jasper should be a little pissed this time.OCexile30-03-2025