Pedersen saw Philipsen unleash an 87 km/h sprint: 'Insane to hang on the outside in a corner like that'

After 9 days of the Tour de France, Mads Pedersen is wearing the green jersey. The Dane from Lidl-Trek has made that classification a top priority since the start of the race, but he knows Paris is still a long way off. On the rest day, he looked back and ahead in his podcast “Lang Distance,” from a mediocre French hotel.

He has already won the points classifications in the Giro and the Vuelta, but the Tour is still missing. “When the new points system came out, I thought for a moment: okay, this sucks,” said Pedersen, referring to the changes in the flat stages. These stages now offer more points to be earned—especially for the pure sprinters.

"It's going to be a lot harder now to take that jersey with me to Paris. But I can guarantee you that I'll give it my all to bring it home," he solemnly promises. Pedersen now has 268 points, while Biniam Girmay (second with 223), Tim Merlier (third with 213), and Jasper Philipsen (fourth with 191) are still hot on his heels.

"Even if I don't win another stage, it would still be amazing to be in Paris wearing that green jersey," he continues. "I'm not dreaming about it yet. Right now, I'm just working really hard for it. After next week’s time trial, we’ll take stock, and from that point on, we can start dreaming day by day,” says Pedersen.

He knows there are still good opportunities for him on days 17 and 21 during the final week. “If we get through the upcoming mountain stages and the two upcoming sprint stages with minimal loss of points, that’s when we’ll really start to open the throttle. That’s when things will really start to get exciting for us,” says the Lidl-Trek team leader, whose squad also includes Quinn Simmons and Mathias Vacek, who are perfectly suited for those kinds of stages.

But first, on Wednesday and Thursday, the goal is to limit the damage. “The last sprint we rode, last Saturday, wasn’t great. I really lost a lot of points there. I can’t afford to lose 40 or 45 points again—that’s just a little too costly,” he says, keeping everyone on their toes.

Pedersen won the fourth stage and also had a strong showing on Sunday, finishing fifth in the transition stage to Ussel and winning the intermediate sprint. However, that took its toll, the Dane admits. “It was a minute during which I pedaled at nearly 900 watts—well, 874 watts to be exact,” he said of the uphill sprint along the route.

He also reflected on an intermediate sprint in Friday’s seventh stage, in which he outpaced all the pure sprinters with a clever burst of speed. “That sprint was all about routine. I’d checked Veloviewer beforehand and knew you wouldn’t be able to see the finish line until 180 meters before the line. If I accelerate before that point and shoot out like a bullet from a cannon, they’ll never pass me. I think my top speed in that sprint was around 87 km/h.”

Despite that, he still saw Jasper Philipsen closing in. “He was, of course, on his way to plow into the crowd barriers again. It was truly insane to be hanging on the outside in a right-hand turn like that... If I turn even sharper there, I’ll crash. But he just keeps hanging on the outside as if there were oceans of space, until he realizes: ‘Damn, a metal barrier!’ It’s as if he doesn’t even feel it when he hits it. He just thinks, ‘Oh well, fine, that’s part of the deal.’”