Lidl-Trek smiling again after Ciccone briefly rode virtually in red: "Everyone was at their best"

Pedersen has already had three chances to win in this Vuelta, but he couldn’t finish off the opportunity in stage three. In stages one and four, a rusty lead-out train left him far from victory. That made the team time trial a sweet form of redemption. “To be honest, we are really positive about today,” the Dane said after the finish. “This was a dream performance by the whole team. Everyone was performing at their maximum and we got a really good result.”

While UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma | Lease a Bike are always among the best in team time trials, it’s a different story for Lidl-Trek. “We never won a team time trial with a field like this, and now we are less than 10 seconds behind teams who do this every time. We took some really big steps during the winter and this season to be there. It’s minor details the analysts have to look at to gain the last seconds.”

Lidl-Trek started early in the day and quickly set the fastest time, despite having one man less to count on, after Carlos Verona crashed awkwardly in the final stretch. The team had to improvise. “It was a 25-minute full-gas effort, and we knew we could gain time in the technical section thanks to our coaches. The goal was to lose as little time as possible. And then suddenly in the hot seat it got really close, only a few seconds…”

With Ciccone only eight seconds behind Jonas Vingegaard and David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), there was briefly hope for the red jersey. At the second checkpoint, it looked even brighter: Lidl-Trek had a 17-second lead over the Dutch squad. But in the final stretch, the Killer Bees switched on the turbo. “Visma did a really strong finale and in the end it was not about losing the jersey by one second, it’s Jonas who takes it back quite comfortably.”