Trek-Segafredo’s Mads Pedersen is your new UCI Road World Champion
Mads Pedersen finished second to Mathieu van der Poel in the Junior world championships in 2013. And on Sunday, six years later in the 2019 World Championships in Harrogate, Yorkshire, the two would meet again, fighting for another world title, but under very different circumstances.
All the talk ahead of the elite men’s race was about pre-race favorite van der Poel. And Pedersen? He wasn’t even the leader for Denmark, who had more experienced and decorated riders in Michael Valgren and Jakob Fuglsang.
But it was van der Poel who cracked with just over 12 kilometers remaining, and Mads Pedersen – not even on the radar for victory – who would ride on to claim the biggest achievement of his life: World Champion at the tender age of 23 in a rain-soaked, epic race in Yorkshire where the only the hardiest survived.
“It’s unbelievable. I didn’t expect this when we started this morning. It was an unbelievable day,” said Pedersen, at a loss for words for what he had just done.”
In a three-up sprint for the coveted rainbow stripes, it wasn’t even close. At the end of a cold, wet and grueling 262 kilometers, Pedersen showed he was the strongest.