With two wins in three days and Jonas Vingegaard, Danish riders were enjoying their strongest Tour de France since Bjarne Riis’ victory 25 years ago.
In Saint-Etienne, former world champion Mads Pedersen came through to add to the success, taking victory from the breakaway for his first career Tour stage victory. The 26-year-old came out on top from a very strong seven-man break, which was established after a long battle early on the 192.6km stage.
Pedersen was always likely to be the quickest finisher from the group but attacked 9km from the line to slim it down to three, and later outsprinted Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious) and Hugo Houle (Israel-Premier Tech) to claim the glory.
He’s the third Danish stage winner in just four days at the Tour, giving the nation more to celebrate after the massive crowds that attended the Grand Départ in the country two weeks ago.
“We felt a lot of support already in Denmark, and also here in France. It’s really crazy to see all the Danish people,” Pedersen said in the post-race press conference at the Stade Geoffroy Guichard.
“The Tour puts, let’s say, four or five stages that fit the Danish guys so good so close to each other. I think that’s more luck than it was anything else, but it also shows that we have a good mix of riders in Denmark with Jonas, Magnus [Cort] and a more sprinty guy like me. It’s just crazy that we have three wins in such a short amount of time.”
Pedersen, Vingegaard, and Cort are accompanied by seven other Danes at the Tour, with the country’s 10 representatives the fourth-most in the peloton – equal with the Dutch and more than Spain.
Last year’s race was the recent high watermark at 11, while recent successes scored by Danes have included Vingegaard’s podium last year, Kasper Asgreen’s 2021 Tour of Flanders triumph, and Jakob Fuglsang winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia in 2019 and 2020, among others.
Pedersen attributed Danish cycling’s recent resurgence to the work put in at club and junior level and beyond. He wanted to thank those who had helped him and other Danish stars to get where they are now, adding that he hopes the developmental support will continue in the future.
“I think all the hard work from local clubs, junior teams, people who were doing this for free to help talents, the national team, the continental teams – all this work is really paying off now,” he said.
“For so many years, it was working so well in Denmark with all this support and now we have a big…
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