Cycling | The last "normal" rider: How Mads Pedersen is shaping the Giro d'Italia

What hasn't been said about Mads Pedersen? At 1.80 meters, he's too tall for cycling , at 70 kilograms, too heavy for the mountains—and he's already achieved great things at too young a age. Indeed, after his surprise victory at the age of 23 in the rainy 2019 World Championship race in Harrogate, when his young body was still best able to cope with all the hardships of the day and he had beaten the more experienced and extremely fast Matteo Trentin in the sprint, he didn't achieve much for a while.

Extremely fast and enduring

Pedersen was considered a comet that appeared once and then burned out. However, it is important to note that in his generation there are two riders, Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert, with a similar mix of qualities: extremely fast, but not a sprint specialist, stamina, but not a mountain flea. And both are simply better. Because superstar Tadej Pogačar also rides the classics, Pedersen was denied the really big wins in cycling's monuments. The Dane had to settle for second to fourth places in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, behind the Dutchman or the Slovenian, sometimes behind both. And the Belgian van Aert also occasionally finished ahead of him.

Now, at the Giro d'Italia , Pedersen not only has van Aert under control. In his two stage wins at the opening race in Albania, his team Lidl Trek made the race so fast in the mountains before the finish that both the Belgian and the sprint specialists were pushed to their limits.

Pacemaker

"Mads is so good in the mountains this year that you can't break him and he always comes over the summits with the best 30 men," praises his teammate Patrick Konrad, when "nd" asks the Austrian climber about setting the pace for the captain.

Pedersen also considers himself the "best version of myself" this season. There are several reasons for this. He has become more professional: Since 2024, he has been working with a nutritionist – and listening to him. "I'm not the type who gets obsessed with too many details. I don't worry about my carbohydrate intake. I don't tinker wildly with my bike either. But I trust the experts around me and consider them the best in the world," he says, describing his attitude. The approach, which has become unfashionable in the sport, of not worrying about trivial matters but simply riding the bike, combined with the principle of delegating things, is leading to new successes for Pedersen.

jersey collector

Last year, the Dane celebrated overall victories in smaller tours such as the Deutschland Tour and the Tour de Provence. He also won the sprint classic Gent–Wevelgem. He repeated this success this year, as well as his victory in Provence; he also finished on the podium at the Tour of Flanders and Paris–Roubaix. At the start of the Giro d'Italia, the now 29-year-old was able to pull on the leader's jersey of a Grand Tour for the first time. "I've made it a tradition not to wash the jerseys I wore when I won races, but to just iron them and hang them up at home," he once revealed. Now there could be a few more to come. "After the rest day, there are a few days when Mads is lying down. He should defend Rosa then," his teammate Konrad told "nd".

Pedersen's top form this spring is also due to new training approaches. High-altitude training camps are still not part of his program. "I hate spending weeks away from my family on some barren mountain," he emphasized his previous aversion, which also falls into the old-school category. But he tried the latest trend in training theory: indoor heat training. "That's horrible, too. I'd rather train outside for seven hours a day, seven days a week. But heat training doesn't just help you adapt to hot competition days. It also increases your blood volume and thus your performance," he explained.

Mistakes and rewards

Heat training is the home alternative to altitude training, with similar effects on blood parameters. And for someone who has previously avoided altitude, the effects are apparently significant. The Mads Pedersen of 2025 is precisely living up to the expectations that followed his sensational victory at the 2019 World Cup. This speaks to some past mistakes, but also shows that perseverance can pay off.