{"id":582431,"date":"2026-04-03T07:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/582431\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T07:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:44:15","slug":"mads-pedersen-who-offered-wout-van-aert-support-after-the-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/582431\/","title":{"rendered":"Mads Pedersen – who offered Wout van Aert support after the finish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mads Pedersen<\/a> and his Lidl-Trek<\/a> team were heavily involved in the action on Wednesday<\/a> once the live coverage of Dwars door Vlaanderen<\/a> began, but in the end the Danish leader had to settle for ninth place in Waregem. Afterwards, he gave his account of the race to, among others, IDLProCycling.com.<\/p>\n

After just over seventy kilometres of racing, Lidl-Trek opened things up with Czech rider Mathias Vacek, Danish champion S\u00f8ren Kragh Andersen and Pedersen himself. The two Danes stayed in contention all the way to the finish, while Vacek had already dropped out along the way, but Pedersen concluded afterwards that their best effort had already been spent by that point.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it would be a gamble to open the race that early, after 70 kilometres, but it was a good plan,\u201d Pedersen said, after seeing the peloton burn plenty of energy to reel in the eighteen-man front group.<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

Pedersen<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe we used too much energy there as well, but it is what it is,\u201d Pedersen continued. \u201cIt did not pay off, but that is just how it goes. It was a nice day of racing. We wanted a long, hard race, and that is exactly what we got.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the final, the Dane was still able to contest the victory, but it was ultimately Filippo Ganna of INEOS Grenadiers who came through best. \u201cWe knew it had to be a long sprint to catch Wout,\u201d said Pedersen, who was one <\/a>of the first riders to go over to Van Aert after the finish to offer him support.<\/p>\n

\u201cGanna did it perfectly. He waited long enough and passed him just before the line. I also did not have the legs to produce a proper sprint,\u201d said the rider who finished ninth. \u201cI know that is still something missing after the injury, that punch. I had a good day on the bike, and that was the main thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read on below the video!<\/p>\n

Pedersen explains how wrist injury is hurting his acceleration<\/p>\n

\u201cThat acceleration I am missing… you know, it is not easy when you spend six weeks riding around with a broken wrist,\u201d Pedersen explained. \u201cYou do all your training seated, so I knew I would be missing those accelerations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course it would have been nicer if the bike had felt as though it had no chain on it, but it was decent,\u201d said the former world champion, who is set to ride the Tour of Flanders<\/a> on Sunday, where he finished second last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not going to stand here and tell you that I am good enough. I will be able to give a much better answer after the race. This Dwars door Vlaanderen has nothing to do with the Tour of Flanders.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mads Pedersen and his Lidl-Trek team were heavily involved in the action on Wednesday once the live coverage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,175290,172195,49602,63568,85,167262],"class_list":{"0":"post-582431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-dwars-door-vlaanderen","12":"tag-idl-productions","13":"tag-lidl-trek","14":"tag-mads-pedersen","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-tour-of-flanders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}