With a tough climb coming with 26km to go on stage 5 of the Vuelta a España, Lidl-Trek's sprinter Mads Pedersen was widely expected to be challenging for the stage win in Terres de l'Ebre, but instead, Pedersen was dropped on the Alto de Paüls and Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) won his second stage of the race.
Pedersen, last year's points classification winner in the Vuelta, is currently well off the pace of race leader Tadej Pogačar's tally in the points classification of 82 points, with only 20 scored for his fourth place on stage 2. However, the Dane didn't express any regrets for burying himself to work for his teammate Mattias Skjelmose during the 173.3-kilometre stage.
Lidl-Trek tried to take advantage of a section of the course that ran along the coast with a brisk crosswind to split the peloton. While the effort was briefly successful and the surge nullified the early breakaway, the peloton ultimately came back together.
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"The priority is to help Skjelmose," Pedersen said matter-of-factly. "There wasn't really any crosswind during the race, but the race was run because there was a crosswind, so it still takes quite a bit of effort to do that work. Yes, there isn't much left in you when you have to ride a run-in like that and then ride across afterwards. All in all, it's fine; [Skjelmose] didn't lose any time and he got through the day easily, so that's how it should be."
The Alto de Paüls was only 3.5km long, but with an average of 7.1% and some sections edging into the double digits, it was hard enough to distance a few sprinters, but Pedersen had already given up on contesting the stage.
"I didn't even really get a chance to feel that it was tough, because I'd already dropped back," he explained. "I knew full well it was going to be a tough day, and I don't think I had particularly high hopes of actually being in the mix for the sprint, as I knew I'd have to work so hard for Skjelmose today. So yes, we perhaps didn't focus as much on the climb as we should have done if we'd turned up with a full team prepared to contest the stage win.
"I know why I'm taking part in this Vuelta, and that's to help Mattias. It just means sacrificing some of my own chances, but I'm perfectly fine with that," he added. "I might still have a stage win in me, and I certainly believe it's possible, but I won't have the same level of support as I did in the Tour. I'm pleased about that too, and it makes me happy to be able to do this for Mathias; my personal goal is, of course, to see him on the podium."
For his part, Skjelmose said the crosswinds turned out to be "a lot of stress over nothing, but it was all right. We got through it well, and Thibau [Nys] had a chance to sprint".
Lidl-Trek put in a massive turn with Visma-Lease a Bike, and the bunch had two significant splits, with green jersey holder Ethan Hayter (Soudal-Quickstep) for a time on the wrong side of one; however, even if none of their rivals was caught out, Skjelmose agreed with the strategy to keep himself on the right side of any gaps.
"You'd rather put in the effort to make sure it doesn't happen than save your energy and sit at the back of the pack. So yes, people don't want to miss out on it.
"We'd obviously liked [splits] to happen, but we realised fairly quickly that it wasn't going to amount to anything. So Mads just pulled it out onto the windward side and took me up a couple of times, so there wasn't much to it. I had a lovely, relaxed ride."
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