It’s going to be a battle against time and against his body for Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) to return to the Spring Classics in competitive form, as he is still unable to train properly on the road after a heavy crash at the start of February.
Pedersen started his season at the Volta Comunitat Valenciana in Spain, but didn’t even make it through one day of racing, coming down in a heavy, 70kph crash that saw him fracture his collarbone and wrist, undergoing surgery and re-plating of the collarbone, whilst he is still wearing a brace on his wrist.
A former three-time winner of Ghent-Wevelgem and podium finisher in most of the big Classics – including a runner up spot at the Tour of Flanders in 2025 – Pedersen was expected to challenge the likes of Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar this spring, and is clearly not ready to write off a whole campaign due to injury.
However, the surgical fixing of the collarbone – which saw Pedersen have a previous metal plate replaced by another, with painful recovery ensuing – and the broken wrist makes it challenging to train on the road, with the vibrations and pressure causing pain and potential for further damage.
As a result, Pedersen is still training primarily on a static trainer, with only a few hours out on the road per week.
“The last block I had 20 hours on the trainer, and three hours total on the road,” he recalled.
“Not ideal, let’s say it like this,” he said about riding outside on tarmac. “But that’s why we have [a mechanic] here was well to put a position on the bike where it’s possible, and again, we’re pushing the limits, so it’s also finding a balance on how much we should ride on the road. I still have to ride with this cast on to make the wrist stiff. So it’s not easy to maintain doing six to seven hour endurance rides on the road, but we try to do as much as we can, and try to push the limits also.”
The element of not pushing the limit too far is not lost on Pedersen and the people around him, however.
“Jens [Hinder, the team’s head doctor and Head of Riders’ Welfare] also knows that there’s a life after cycling and there’s also an aftermath of injuries like this, and if you push it too early then we can fuck up more than we benefit from it,” he said. “So it’s good to have him here to keep us a little bit… holding us back, because if it was up to me, I would just cut this brace somewhere so I could fit my hand on the handlebar and then seven hours later, thanks for the ride.”
Fortunately, the team is there to rein Pedersen in, and for now it is still many hours on the indoor trainer, as he tries to battle the odds to be back and racing competitively in the next month.
“I always found it a bit tough to be so many hours on the trainer, but mainly because I couldn’t see the big idea behind it, but now I can see the idea behind actually pushing these hours on the trainer. And then I just suck it up if it’s boring or whatever,” he said, before thanking team sponsors Wahoo and Rouvy for his indoor set-up.
“But of course when you’re on the fifth or sixth hour on this trainer, then it starts to be mentally hard as well. But if it was easy, everyone could do it, right?”
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