Danish all-rounder Mads Pedersen gave his Lidl-Trek teammates a public dressing-down after stage 1 of Paris-Nice, after they collectively did not ship Pedersen to a place the place he might combat for victory.
Pedersen is clearly in good kind, having simply gained a stage and the general within the Tour de la Provence earlier this yr and has a very good monitor file in Paris-Nice, too, with stage wins in 2022 and 2023.
However, the previous World Champion got here dwelling a disenchanted twelfth within the bunch dash at Le-Perray-en-Yvelines that determined stage 1 of the 2025 version, after he and his teammates did not work effectively sufficient collectively within the closing kilometres to place Pedersen able to battle in opposition to stage winner Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep).
“There’s not a lot to analyse. It was simply awful using, and the work being carried out immediately wasn’t ok in any respect. So there’s not a lot to say,” he instructed Danish TV station TV2.
“There’s some positional wrestle the place I misplaced them [his teammates], however on the similar time I knew it will open up once more on the left facet sooner or later, so I might bounce again to them. But one thing occurred to them too, they usually misplaced one another.”
Pedersen was in a slightly extra conciliatory temper on Monday morning at first in Montesson of a second, flatter stage, saying he hoped it will additionally conclude with one other bunch dash, however with a really completely different consequence.
“We made some errors coming into the dash, we misplaced one another too many occasions and had an excessive amount of work discovering one another once more, so we simply missed out on having an opportunity for sprinting,” Pedersen instructed Cyclingpro.net at first of stage 2.
Although his general dissatisfaction remained clear, in distinction Pedersen singled out Sunday’s efficiency by Mattias Skjelmose for reward for his stage 1 efficiency, after the Dane bridged throughout to a harmful late breakaway additionally together with Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers) and Matteo Trentin (Tudor Pro Cycling).
That motion had saved his teammates some power for the finale after issues got here again collectively once more, Pedersen identified, just for their plan to go critically awry within the build-up for the dash itself.
At the stage 2 begin, Pedersen remained upbeat for his probabilities of getting a 3rd Paris-Nice stage win in 4 editions of the race at Bellegarde on Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s a little bit of a unique dash immediately, the final 5 kilometres are fairly simple,” he identified, “and hopefully we’ll get it proper immediately.”
