No excuses from green jersey Mads Pedersen after Tour de France sprint miss: 'Our approach isn’t changing'

Mads Pedersen finished 11th in Wednesday’s Tour de France sprint in Nevers, a result with which the Dane from Lidl-Trek was moderately satisfied. Afterward, he was especially happy that Soren Waerenskjold of Uno-X—who, for the record, is not competing for the points classification —won the stage and not one of the other sprinters.

Pedersen took stock of the race after the finish. “The intermediate sprint was pretty good, but the finish was definitely not good enough. That’s a shame. At one point, I had to slow down quite a bit to get into the sprint train, and then I ended up in the maelstrom. It’s just not easy to find the gaps.”

"It's no excuse; I'm just not good enough at it," says the always honest Pedersen. "It’s disappointing to finish eleventh; it would have been nice to finish fifth, sixth, or seventh—hard to say—but I can be glad that Kanter, Philipsen, and Girmay didn’t win the stage."

How did he manage the fastest stage ever at the Tour? “Well, it was actually pretty easy. I think it was especially grueling for the guys at the front and the teams that had to lead out. But for the rest of us, it was actually a great day. It’s not that hard if you’re constantly drafting. With a course like this, where the pace stays high all day, it’s not as bad as you’d think. It’s nowhere near as hard as it sounds.'

For the wearer of the green jersey, the focus is now on Thursday’s stage, which will likely end in another sprint. “But then we’ll have had the real flat sprinter stages. The big points will have been distributed by then. I’m still very much in the running for the green jersey; I’m wearing it today, and hopefully I’ll still be wearing it after tomorrow. So yes, our approach isn’t changing. From that point on, it’s a matter of staying alert and jumping in wherever possible with the team."