{"id":34189,"date":"2025-07-30T19:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/34189\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T19:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T19:56:08","slug":"insane-mads-pedersen-hails-wout-van-aerts-montmartre-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/34189\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cInsane\u201d \u2013 Mads Pedersen hails Wout van Aert\u2019s Montmartre win"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the best riders of the 2025 season was missing from
\nthe biggest race on the calendar. Who are we talking about? Mads Pedersen<\/a> of
\ncourse, the Lidl-Trek<\/a> rider who has racked up victories and podiums across the
\ncalendar this year,but wasn\u2019t at the
\nTour de France<\/a>. Fans noticed. Pedersen noticed, too, watching the final stage
\nof the Tour not from the peloton, but from home.<\/p>\n

“I trained for the last few stages myself, so I watched
\nthe finales,” he said on the Lang Distance podcast. “But I really had
\nto see this one, especially when I saw the weather forecast.” It was the
\nfinal day of the Tour, a rain-slicked circuit race in Paris that featured three
\nclimbs up Montmartre for the very first time. And on that brutal terrain, Wout
\nvan Aert delivered a dominant solo win, dropping overall winner Tadej Pogacar
\nand blowing apart the field in front of a soaked Parisian crowd.<\/p>\n

“It was an insane stage,” Pedersen said. “We
\nknew from the moment they first reached Montmartre that it was going to be a
\nmadhouse. And the rain made it a completely insane cycling race.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For a rider like Pedersen, the scene in Paris was bittersweet,
\nas he had the form to be there. The 29-year-old won four stages at the Giro
\nd\u2019Italia in May and walked away with the points jersey, beating Van Aert on
\nmany occasions. He also climbed onto the podium at both the Tour of Flanders
\nand Paris-Roubaix in the spring, cementing his place as one of the most
\nversatile riders in the peloton. Still, he was left off Lidl-Trek\u2019s Tour de
\nFrance team.<\/p>\n

Instead, the team selected Jonathan Milan as its sprint
\nleader and Mattias Skjelmose for the general classification. Milan delivered in
\nemphatic fashion, winning two stages and claiming the green jersey, but
\nSkjelmose was less fortunate, forced to abandon the race before the final week.
\nWith Milan\u2019s triumph in the points competition, Lidl-Trek secured its second
\nconsecutive Grand Tour green jersey after Pedersen\u2019s in the Giro, and a chance
\nnow looms to make it three for three.<\/p>\n

Pedersen will lead the team at the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, where
\nhe\u2019ll look to complete the hat-trick in points classifications across all three
\nGrand Tours. That campaign begins next month in Spain. After being left off the
\nTour squad, Pedersen’s motivation is clear, and he\u2019s already thinking about
\nwhat it will be like to return to the Tour de France stage in the future.<\/p>\n

“I hope it’s the same when I return to the Tour,”
\nhe said. For a rider who has made a habit of winning, let\u2019s hope he can be on
\nthe start line next July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the best riders of the 2025 season was missing from the biggest race on the calendar.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-34189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}