Pedersen takes the win and race lead after late break with Skjelmose
Lidl-Trek’s Tour of Denmark couldn’t have started any better, with Mads Pedersen winning the opening stage and taking the race lead. Pedersen was joined by teammate and compatriot Mattias Skjelmose in the lead group, which broke away from the peloton with 35km to go. The five-man group combined well and caught the early breakaway, which joined them to the finish.
As the finish approached, Skjelmose covered every attack and rode hard on the front to lead out Pedersen to victory. The peloton crossed the line 38 seconds after Pedersen, giving the former World Champion, and Skjelmose, a healthy advantage in the overall classification after the first stage. Tomorrow, we head to the Danish mainland for a flat and fast stage close to Copenhagen.
Skjelly did an amazing leadout, what a day!
“In the end we can’t complain,” said Mads Pedersen at the finish. “It was a really good group that we went across with second time up the climb. There were only a few GC riders there and a lot of GC guys in the second group. Everyone in the break was committed to working and make as much time as possible on the peloton so it was a super nice group and we worked well until the last km and a half and then there was a bit of attacking, but Skjelly did an amazing leadout so yeah, what a day! We talked about if we could go to the finish line without losing any time and be in the mix then we would be happy because today we knew we could lose the GC. To come away with 35/40 seconds on the peloton is a perfect start to the race.
“Coming from Denmark, we know how the roads are and it’s often coming from big roads to small roads and the small roads here are pretty small, so to be a full peloton on these small roads can really stretch it out and causes a lot of stop & go style racing. It makes it a lot harder especially if you’re in position 50 or something because then you’re all day like an elastic band just up and down, up and down. It was a big help being the team that everyone was looking at because it meant we had to work which also meant then we had a good position, so it was ideal.
We’ve been in this situation before. It’s always ideal to have more than one set of cards to play and now we’re in a perfect situation and it’s only a few guys in the GC now and we have two of them.”