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.
The Dane is currently in Mallorca on a mini training camp with a small number of riders and team staff, though still doing the majority of his training indoors rather than on the road, as he and his team try to fight back to form, without causing any more lasting damage.
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He appeared on the team's In the Middle of Lidl-Trek podcast on Friday to give an update on his training and recovery. As his team get underway at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday, there is currently no indication as to what race Pedersen might be aiming at returning at.
"We try to push the limits to be ready for the Classics," he said, before going on to explain that even if he can physically return to racing soon, the challenge will be cultivating the form needed to compete with the titans of the spring.
A former three-time winner of Gent-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.
Whilst he made a quick return to indoor training, and his teammates have described his comeback as "unreal", he underlined that there is still a long way to go to be in race-winning form.
"Of course I miss racing now. It would have been nice to do Valencia, to finish Provence and also to be able to go into Paris-Nice soon. It's a pity and also it's a big question mark, how will the body react when we start racing in the Classics? Because if I make it to the Classics, these will be my first races. How will the body react? How will the legs be? Because it is different from racing to training and so on. So it's a big question mark how the level will be.
"But if we didn't believe in it, I wouldn't break my ass off and be destroying myself on this Wahoo home trainer, sitting here in the sun at the swimming pool while the other guys are riding on the road. We believe in it, and we believe it's still possible even without that many race day. We have seen it with other riders also that they don't need that many race days to be ready. As we say in Denmark, and I'm sure it's a saying in many other countries, there's so many ways to Rome, and this is a different way we're taking this year."
Pedersen detailed the specifics of his crash in Valenciana, which saw him go down at 70kph, breaking his collarbone and hurting his wrist but also suffering a number of cuts to his face after crashing into a thorny bush.
He recalled how he tried to push himself up from the ground, which is how he discovered his collarbone was broken and his hand injured, and his race doctors found him still face down on the ground.
"When the doctors came, they see me and I'm still out of air [winded] and they see me with my face down, lying on my stomach. They put this thing on my neck and everything and they said 'the back could be broken, we have to watch out'. Then you start to think 'fuck, if my back is broken, it's not about coming back to cycling', you know, it's like how bad is it? What is possible from now on?" he said.
"But then luckily it's only a wrist and a collarbone, a few screws then it's good again."
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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