"With 2km to go, I was still around position 40/50" - Mads Pedersen misses out on another Giro d'Italia stage win after navigating pair of crashes

Mads Pedersen wasn't able to make it a hat-trick of stage wins this Giro d'Italia on stage 4, finishing 4th in a more traditional bunch sprint as Casper van Uden powered to a slightly surprising win. Still in the Maglia Rosa though, Pedersen isn't getting too downhearted by missing out.

"I had the space, just didn’t have the legs. That’s how it is. Sometimes the legs are there, sometimes they’re not," reflected the Dane honestly in his post-race interview afterwards. "On a day like today, where the whole stage is kind of easy and you end with a sprint on fresh legs — that’s not really my favourite kind of sprint. But it’s okay. We still scored good points, and we keep fighting."

Given that Pedersen was caught up in not one but two crashes during the day, the Lidl-Trek leader was perhaps missing that final kick that could have taken him to another win. "Luckily, I wasn't on the ground in either of them. I did stop both times though. The first time didn’t really matter — we made it back easy, and it was early in the day. The second one was a bit tougher," he explains. "It took almost a full lap for Daan Hoole to bring me back. That was a bit annoying, losing Soren Kragh Andersen in a crash like that and then having to use Daan to get me back — it destroyed our train. But yeah, we still did a good job with damage control and got some decent points out of today, so it’s okay."

"Soren was supposed to be the last guy. So it's a pity to lose him," continues Pedersen. "Daan then had to keep us at the front so we could enter that last technical section in a good position. But when you have to use him for that, I end up a bit alone. Mathias Vacek also had to use a lot of energy. So, yeah — it turned into a bit of a bad situation for us. But that's racing. Now I just want to see Soren and I hope he's okay."

Despite these setbacks though, Pedersen never lost faith in his ability to contest the final sprint. "No, I have really strong teammates. I was pretty sure they would bring me back," he concludes. "I knew it would be tough in the sprint — I had to find another team to trust and ride with — but I was confident the guys would get me back to the front."