Mads Pedersen lit up stage 17 of the Tour de France, but came away empty handed: 'A proper sh*t day'

Mads Pedersen was not at all happy with the outcome of Stage 17 of the Tour de France. Although the Dane from Lidl-Trek won the intermediate sprint heading into the finish, Jasper Philipsen, also competing for the green jersey, win the final sprint. As a result, Pedersen saw his lead in the points classification reduced to just 7.

Lidl-Trek and Pedersen had the race under control for a long time in a explosive stage for the attackers. There were no sprinters at the front of a large breakaway following an opening phase full of climbs. But since the peloton was still close behind, Pedersen decided to make a move on his own.

"Maybe we should have let the first large group go, but it looked like Decathlon CMA CGM wanted to close the gap for a sprint," Pedersen said about that move after the race. In the end, the Dane formed a six-rider breakaway, which allowed him to be the first to reach the intermediate sprint. With 25 points in the bag, the group seemed eager for more.

However, things turned out completely differently. After Pedersen won the intermediate sprint following all the hard work in the breakaway, a sort of first peloton formed behind the breakaway. It included many sprinter teams, including Philipsen and Alpecin-Premier Tech. That group closed the gap to the breakaway and lone leader Jasper Stuyven and turned it into a sprint finish.

Philipsen won the stage, and since Pedersen had nothing left in his legs and finished only eighth, Philipsen gained a whopping 40 points in the points classification thanks to the victory. The gap between Pedersen and the Belgian after 17 days? 7 points. “A proper shit day,” the green jersey wearer concluded in an interview with Eurosport. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

"It's very disappointing to lose so many points; I don't know what else to say," said Pedersen. "I don't know right now what we could have done differently. The group didn’t really work well together after the intermediate sprint. My sprint at the end wasn’t good enough, and Jasper was extremely strong, so all in all, this has been a really disappointing day.”