Hoole names difference between "beautiful leader" Mads Pedersen and Mathieu van der Poel

Dutch rider Daan Hoole is set to join Decathlon CMA CGM next season, leaving Lidl-Trek after three years in the WorldTour for a new French adventure. It wasn’t an easy decision — Lidl-Trek felt like family — but Hoole is ready to embrace fresh challenges.

For years, Hoole was an invaluable teammate for former world champion Mads Pedersen. “He’s a great leader to ride for,” Hoole said on the Live Slow Ride Fast podcast. “A special guest, super-driven, a hard worker — and he knows how to have fun. He takes it seriously, but not too seriously. That’s part of the success.”

In 2025, Søren Kragh Andersen also rode for Lidl-Trek after his stint at Alpecin-Deceuninck — the team of Mathieu van der Poel — and noticed the difference in leadership styles between the two captains. Van der Poel tends to activate his team only on race day, while Pedersen involves his squad more in the process.

Hoole echoed that sentiment: “I’ve also ridden with Mathieu at the Olympics and European and World Championships, but Mads is different because he needs us more. You can have plenty of fun with Mathieu too, but as a leader he’s different — he’s so good at positioning himself, and usually wins his races solo.”

Hoole was part of a strong Lidl-Trek squad in the Giro d’Italia, where the team notched up big successes and Hoole himself took the time trial victory. He described Pedersen’s leadership: “He says before a stage: today I need you. I know I can win, but you have to put me in the position to win. If I get to the finish right, I win. That’s nice.”

Despite feeling at home at Lidl-Trek, Hoole opted to leave. “It was very hard. I was in a great spot and had nothing to complain about. Now I get a bit more freedom, and the project with Olav [Kooij] really appealed to me, with Cees [Vermeltfoort] too. That looked fun. But it really felt like a second family.”

Even during the season, Hoole struggled with the idea. “Then you do that Giro and win six stages with the team, and you think: next year I won’t be here anymore. That’s sometimes a pretty shitty thought.” At Decathlon CMA CGM, Hoole will play an important role in the sprint train for Olav Kooij, serving as the first lead-out man. But beyond sprint duties, he’ll have more opportunities to pursue his own goals in big classics.

At Lidl-Trek he was a domestique for Pedersen in races like the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix — where he finished 17th on the velodrome — but at his new team he expects more personal chances. “That will take some getting used to,” Hoole acknowledged. “So far I haven’t proven I can ride the finale of Flanders or something like that. But I’ll get more chances now. Racing a finale is the best thing there is. Still, I like helping someone who can really win more than finishing 25th myself.”

Hoole also shared a heated moment from Paris-Roubaix 2024 involving Yevgeniy Fedorov. The two found themselves in a promising break together, but a corner changed everything. “I came in just under him in a turn, and after that he was completely angry — he hit me hard in the ribs,” Hoole said. “That wasn’t on camera, otherwise he probably would have been pulled from the race. I was trying to hold the wheel and race the finale in Roubaix.”

Later, the two crossed paths at a training camp in Spain. “I saw him and got really angry. I said, ‘You wanna fight? Come on.’ He speaks poor English, but a teammate beside him translated: ‘He wants to fight with you.’” The situation eventually defused — at the Tour of Guangxi Alexey Lutsenko joked to Hoole that they were friends — and Hoole now laughs about it. “If I say in a race, ‘Fedorov, left,’ he lets me through,” Hoole said with a grin.