Lidl-Trek have become the team to beat at the cobbled Classics, with Sports Director Grégory Rast describing Mads Pedersen and the US squad’s performance at Gent-Wevelgem as “perfect” as they took on and defeated a top-form Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
When asked how he could beat Van der Poel in a sunny Ypres ahead of the start of Gent-Wevelgem, even Pedersen, one of the most confident and assured riders in the peloton, wasn’t sure.
“It’s difficult… I don’t know,” Pedersen said. “This guy is just the best cyclist, one of the best cyclists in the world. It’s not easy for us to deal with him but we have to try to beat him somehow.”
But it appears eventual-winner Pedersen was leaked the script of the day as he told Cyclingnews they would follow their approach from E3 Saxo Classic where they were the dominant outfit, with numbers at the front and hopefully too much for the World Champion this time.
“Definitely, with a team like this, we have to play with numbers and the main goal with us is to have the numbers in the final and then we can play it differently to if we were only one or two riders,” Pedersen said.
However, as it was in E3, it’s not as simple as that with Van der Poel presenting a unique challenge in his ability to perform on the biggest stages no matter the team pressures he has faced throughout his illustrious career. Be that Visma-Lease a Bike, Lidl-Trek or Soudal-QuickStep, the flying Dutchman has almost always had an answer when it matters most.
“We try every time to beat him [Van der Poel] and try to be there with a lot of numbers like we were in E3. But even there, we have four guys and he’s still capable of beating us,” Pedersen said.
He wasn’t hopeless in the challenge, of course not – Pedersen is a champion of the sport, but he was realistic in the respect given to the World Champion who was unstoppable up the Paterberg at E3 Saxo Classic and rode 43 kilometres solo to the line, echoing his admiration at the post-race press conference even after defeating him in the sprint-a-deux.
“You know Mathieu is one of the biggest stars in cycling. Without criticising my own team, none of us is on that level,” Pedersen said.
“If we want to beat guys like him or Wout [van Aert] or even [Tadej] Pogačar, we have to be with numbers and put pressure on them. I think today we saw a way of doing…
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