No excuses from Mads Pedersen and Lidl-Trek after Paris-Roubaix

After finishing third in Paris-Roubaix, there was a sense of acceptance amongst Mads Pedersen and his Lidl-Trek team on Sunday evening, happy with a spot on the podium after the race they had and the indomitable strength of Mathieu van der Poel.

The team lost Jonathan Milan early on to a crash, and then once the race had split apart, a puncture for Pedersen saw him have to chase back to the front group, with only Mathias Vacek for company.

Neither Lidl-Trek rider managed to infiltrate the three-man group that went with 87km to go, which meant they had to chase it down, effectively bringing Van der Poel back to the front of the race and pre-empting his winning attack.

Read more: Paris-Roubaix – Mathieu van der Poel defends title with 60km solo exhibition

From the group chasing the world champion, Pedersen sprinted to third behind Jasper Philipsen, his first podium finish in Roubaix.

“To be honest I'm really happy,” Pedersen said after the race. “Mathieu was in a different league today, the way he was racing was really impressive. For me it's hard to beat Jasper in a longer race in the sprint – magic would have happened if I beat him in a sprint like this today, so I'm happy.”

Despite beating Van der Poel two weeks ago in Gent-Wevelgem, this has proved a hard feat to replicate for Pedersen and Lidl-Trek, with the Dutchman taking the Flanders-Roubaix double in the weekends since. Though Pedersen has been affected by crashes in that time, he did not point to any physical issues on Sunday.

“I have no excuses today, I was definitely 100% and I was beaten by better boys today,” he said.

“When Mathieu went, everyone was going flat out because you don't want to give this guy thirty seconds, so we all tried but he was just better than us today. I really don't know what else to say, because we are racing everything we can to beat him but it wasn't possible.”

The gap to Van der Poel went out surprisingly quickly after he attacked, with the chase group possibly stalling, but Pedersen was keen to point out that they were not just letting him go.

“Everyone is basically going flat out because we want to catch him again. At the point when he's just gaining time and gaining time, we are kind of doing a second race behind. We also want to make the selection in our group and make it smaller and smaller, so everyone is committed and going flat out. Maybe he has a puncture or whatever so you never know, the race is not over when he leaves, but today it was.”

‘We wanted to play for the win’

© Getty Images

Mathias Vacek played a vital role for Lidl-Trek in Paris-Roubaix

Though Van der Poel was undeniably the strongest rider in the race on Sunday, it wasn’t solely a battle of brute force, and the tactics in the lead group did play into it. When Stefan Küng, Gianni Vermeersch and Nils Politt up the road, it was down to Lidl-Trek to chase that advanced move down, which they did, but it was a big expenditure after already bringing Pedersen back to the front. However, the team stuck by the decision to do this, rather than risk not being in contention for the win at all.

“It looks like no one else wanted to do it and it was a really, really strong group, so we wanted to bring them back, because we wanted to play for the win today,” Lidl-Trek DS Grégory Rast told GCN. “Then of course Mathieu could recover, but also Mads didn't need to pull at this moment. But then Matias was done and Mads needed to do quite a lot of work.”

The burden of work in that group was made heavier by the fact that Lidl-Trek were missing Jonathan Milan, a potential second option or strong helper, after the Italian crashed early in the race. Despite Pedersen’s assertion that he didn’t have any excuses, Rast did offer some reasons, if not excuses, as to why the team couldn’t match Alpecin on Sunday.

“The day started very bad with the crash of Jonathan Milan, I think this changed for us a lot because we had one less guy for the final, so we had basically only Mads left for the final and this was the biggest change for us,” he said.

© Getty Images

Jonathan Milan at the start of the 2024 Paris-Roubaix

“When the race opened also Mads had a flat tyre, he needed to chase back. We had also a little bit of luck with flat tyres, [which meant] we were 'only' two guys with Mads before Arenberg, but these two guys did great – Edward Theuns and Mathias Vacek. But of course [Alpecin] played with us, they always had one guy there who we needed to chase, the others didn't want to really chase.

“Then Mads had the flat tyre, I think Vaček brought him back very very strong, but in the end I think Mads missed a little bit when Mathieu was going, because of the efforts he needed to do before and this was the moment we 'lost' the race. But I think he did an unbelievable race to finish on the podium.”

Pedersen also pointed to the loss of Milan as a particular setback, particularly with the likes of Jasper Stuyven and Alex Kirsch also missing from Lidl-Trek’s last few squads after crashing before Flanders.

“I'm pretty sure it would have changed a lot,” he said about the possibility of having Milan in the key moments. “It would have been nice to have one more guy deeper into the final, so when Johnny crashed early in the race it was really shit for us and of course it was a pain in the ass, but we can't change it.”

However, despite the circumstances that have perhaps not worked in Lidl-Trek’s favour in the final few cobbled Classics, they come away from the campaign with one win and top-10s in almost every race, so there’s no sense of disappointment as the door closes on the spring.

“Tonight we're going to celebrate a good Classics season with the team, and tomorrow it's time to go home. I didn't see my wife a lot since January, so it's time to see my family and have a bit of rest,” Pedersen concluded.