Where the hell did Mads Pedersen come from? 'I was pushing the limit all day'

For a long time, we didn’t see a thing of Pedersen. When Mathieu van der Poel broke away, the Dane was nowhere to be seen. When the two leading groups merged, he was nowhere to be seen. Yet he still finished sixth here in Canada. “I was pushing the limit all day,” he laughed afterward in an interview with Eurosport. “Just below it—by half a percent.”

Since Pedersen was riding behind the favorites, we only saw him when he passed the finish line. And each time, he was a little further up in the race. But on the final lap, when Remco Evenepoel also returned to the pack after being dropped, we saw Pedersen catch up to them as well. After Brandon McNulty’s world title, it was perhaps the biggest surprise of the World Championships.

He managed to do that by riding purely at his own pace. “I had to—I couldn’t keep up with those breakaways. Especially on the long climb. There, I really had to stay in my own zone. That was the plan: take a gamble, stay at the limit, and then make a comeback.” We knew from Zurich that people would push past their limits, and the same thing happened today. Because of that, I was still in the fight for the medals.”

In the final lap, the incredibly strong Dane battled for a medal and even briefly caught sight of McNulty. The world title was out of reach, and he started his sprint a little too early: that meant a sixth-place finish. “I had nothing left in the tank, but the result is more than we expected. Because a climb that long is beyond my limits. But I’m proud of my race—it was great.”