Pedersen experienced "one of his worst days on the bike" and has special message for teammates

To say that Mads Pedersen has started the season off well would be a massive understatement. On Saturday afternoon, the 28-year-old Dane was on his seventh race day, out of which he already secured four wins. In the Tour de la Provence, he even pulled a hat trick after another demonstration of his cycling abilities.

"My teammates are incredible," Pedersen began his account of the day via the Lidl-Trek website. "Every day they have to dig deeper and deeper as the race gets harder. So far they have been super impressive and I’m so proud of them. I’m happy to repay them with victories after all their hard work. Huge compliments to all of my teammates."

After the day's last categorized climb followed a phase where the course continued to go up and down. Here, the peloton finally broke into smaller pieces. Pedersen managed to survive the definitive selection. That selection was not the result of decisive attacks but rather a logical next chapter in the attrition caused by the weather. Frigo kept a strong position and had a lead over the chasers, who numbered about ten, three kilometers from the finish.

The final kilometer was treacherously uphill, and at that point Frigo was still in the lead. Just four hundred meters from the finish, the brave Italian was finally caught up with. In the uphill sprint, Pedersen was unmatched. The Lidl-Trek Dane waited quite long but sprinted away from the small group full throttle, snatching the day's victory, thereby also strengthening his leading position in the general classification.

Pedersen had "one of his worst days on the bike"

"Sometimes you have to take the chance and today I had to take the chance here. The boys were working so hard but it started to be tight to catch the leader because he was going – excuse my words – f***ing strong in the front so it was not easy to deal with him at all, so I hoped a smaller group would be better. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t, but today it did."

Classification leader Pedersen knew he was surrounded by his teammates, who were riding at a tight pace in the peloton led by Tim Declercq. With eighty kilometers of racing to go, the five men had established a lead of around two minutes. Along the way, partly due to the bad weather, several riders, especially from the smaller teams, dropped out.

"I agree with Julien Bernard that it was one of the worst days on the bike. It was not an enjoyable day. We spent a lot of time around 700m elevation which isn’t nice when it’s raining like this and it’s two degrees Celsius. It was a tough day for everyone, and if you look at the guys crossing the finish line, they don’t look great."

"I am just happy to win. I don't race to make other guys suffer, I race to win so it's enjoyable to raise the arms when you are passing the finish line. Tomorrow is a sprint stage and we have good sprinters here as well so we will see. I think we are pretty happy with the race so far and anything could happen tomorrow and we will leave this lovely region with a smile on our faces."