Söderqvist puts 30 seconds on teammate Pedersen in under 7 km, Lidl–Trek keeps celebrating

Day three of the Danish stage race was expected to give a much clearer picture of who could truly challenge for the overall win. The GC had already taken shape on day one, with sizeable time gaps after Pedersen won the opening stage from a late breakaway. Stage 2 saw no major changes, ending in a bunch sprint won by Norway’s Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X Mobility).

The 14.3 km test in Kerteminde was almost completely flat. Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) pulled out in the morning due to lingering illness from the Tour de France. Fabio Jakobsen (Picnic PostNL) and Oscar Bluhm (Team Give Steel–2M) were also did not start. For Cort, stage 1 on the island of Bornholm had been a home start; the time trial, however, was back on the Danish mainland.

And when you think of time trialing, you think of Danish specialists. One of them, Wærenskjold, winner of stage 2, set the first serious benchmark with 15:52. Dutch rider Enzo Leijnse (Picnic PostNL) came close with 16:10, before 2021 U23 world champion Johan Price-Pejtersen lowered the best mark. The Alpecin–Deceuninck rider stopped the clock at 15:46, averaging 54.2 km/h.

While Johan Price-Pejtersen was sitting in the hot seat, the Dane was quickly put on alert by two fellow countrymen. Matthias Skjelmose (Lidl–Trek) matched his intermediate time almost exactly, while Julius Johansen (Danish national team) was nearly two seconds quicker. Even so, Price-Pejtersen held on to the lead: Skjelmose finished seven seconds slower, and Johansen faded even more to end up 22 seconds behind.

Meanwhile, Frenchman Arthur Blaise (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Development Team) slotted into provisional fourth between Skjelmose and Johansen, before Dutch trainee Axel van der Tuuk (Euskaltel–Euskadi), third at the Dutch TT nationals, moved into the same position. Shortly after, Søren Kragh Andersen (Lidl–Trek) did the same. That gave us four Danes in the top seven heading into the final hour of the time trial, when the real shake-up began.

Alec Segaert was the first to topple the leaderboard. The Lotto rider was already comfortably faster than Kragh Andersen at the split, and at the finish he shaved 12 seconds off Price-Pejtersen’s time. But Jakob Söderqvist went even faster, averaging 55.3 km/h, the Lidl–Trek rider blasted in five seconds quicker than Segaert. Overall leader and teammate Mads Pedersen was still level at the split but lost 30 seconds in the final seven kilometers. He remains in the leader’s jersey.