Mads Pedersen wins explosive opening stage at the Tour Denmark
A mixture of nine attackers and breakaway riders contested the win on the island of Bornholm, with Perdersen taking the overall lead ahead of four more stages which should suit the Dane's skillset.
Mads Pedersen won the opening stage of the 35th PostNord tour of Norway winning the sprint from a group of nine riders. The win came off the back of brilliant team work from his Lidl-Trek team, Mattias Skjelmose covering any late attacks from the leading group of nine.
Lukáš Kubiš (Unibet-Tietema Rockets) was second with (BHS-PL Beton Bornholm) taking third.
The winning group finished 38 second ahead of the chasing peloton, giving all nine vital time on GC for the remaining four stages.
The stage featured a spirited fight from a five-man breakaway, all of whom were finally brought back with 10km to go, leaving a 10 rider group to compete for the stage win. With general classification time hard to come by over the five stages the group worked remarkably well, though a late attack by Julius Johansen (Denmark) was brought back by Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek).
With the peloton unable to get back to the front, in the final kilometre Victor Vercouille (Flanders-Baloise) made his own bid for glory, but Skjelmose once again did his duty with Pedersen coming over the top to take the stage win.
How it unfolded
For the opening day of this, the 35th edition of the NordPost Tour of Denmark, the race headed to the country’s easternmost populated region, the small Baltic Sea island of Bornholm for 178.3km stage between Nexø and Rønne.
Starting on the island’s eastern edge, the route wound its way west, vaguely parallel with the north coast before turning south for three laps of a 111.5km circuit, containing a sharp climb, before continuing south to the finish. The climb was only 700m at an average gradient of 7.4%, and though it dragged on past the hills classification point, the climbing was done just inside the final 20km, so a bunch sprint was a possibility, though that was to depend on the way it was ridden.
After an aggressive opening few kilometres a group of six riders emerged at the front of the race, Victor Vercouille (Flanders-Baloise), Julius Johansen (Denmark), Darius Innhaug Dahl (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), Magnus Bak Klaris (Airtox-Karl Ras), Conrad Haugsted (ColoQuick) and Mãrtiņš Pluto (Beat Cycling Club) soon building a lead of two minutes.
At an intermediate sprint with 70km to go the gap remained around the two minutes mark, though competition for the bonuses saw Pluto dropped from the break. Meanwhile, Lidl-Trek and UNO-X-Mobility took responsibility for monitoring the peloton’s deficit.
However, having been as low at 1:20, the gap extended by a minute as the race entered the final 50km and the first of the three technical laps. A dead turn introduced the riders to the classified climb and, with all momentum gone for those further back, the peloton split over the top. From the chaos Danish champion Søren Kragh Andersen (Lidl-Trek) attacked and began to bridge to the five leaders, who by now had only 1:28
Andersen was unable to gain much time though, and when he was caught the leaders still had more than a minute on the bunch. On the second ascent of the climb, Pedersen made his move taking Skjelmose with him, as well as William Blume Levy (UNO-X Mobility), Lukáš Kubiš (Unibet-Tietma Rockets) and Niklas Larsen (BHS-PL Baton Bornholm). In the chasing peloton whenever someone attempted a counter-attack a Lidl-Trek rider would be on their wheel, nullifying the move.
On the final ascent of the climb Johansen attacked, taking Klaris with him, the pair leading Pedersen’s chasers by 40 seconds. Only when Pedersen’s group caught the dropped breakaway riders and reached wider roads did their deficit begin to drop, and they finally reached the front of the race with 10km to go, the peloton a minute behind.
