Two sprint wins out of two - and that's maybe only the beginning for Mads Pedersen. 48 hours after he easily saw off the sprint opposition on stage 1 of the Giro d'Italia, the Lidl-Trek fastman turned in an equally impressive dash to victory on stage 3, simultaneously both reclaiming the overall lead from Primoz Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hangrohe) and gaining yet more ground on his rivals in the points classification.
But despite his dominance, the Lidl-Trek racer and former World Champion admitted that he had had serious doubts about whether he could actually win stage 3, given the extremely hilly terrain that preceded the bunch sprint in Vlorë.
However, his uncertainty proved to be completely misplaced, as Pedersen and his Lidl-Trek team turned the tough Cat.2 Qafa e Llogarase climb late on to their advantage, squeezing out multiple potential sprint rivals for Pedersen with a blistering pace on the ascent.
The strategy was effectively a re-run of the tactic that had proved so successful on stage 1, in fact, when Lidl-Trek had accelerated hard on late Cat.3 ascents outside Tirana to ensure that Pedersen was then taking on a depleted field of sprinters.
But Pedersen said after taking his second win, rather than a comparatively benign climb like on Friday, pre-stage 3, he had been concerned that Sunday's much more difficult Cat 2 ascent might have proved too much for him to handle. There was only one way of knowing, though - and that was by seeing how his legs responded on the climb itself.
"Yes, I was in doubt also," he said afterwards. "Already on stage 1, we were like 'ok, this is hard but we're going to be on the limit for sure.
"Then on this one [stage 3], when UAE speeded up close to the top of the last climb, I started to go backwards straightaway.
"If they had gone harder earlier, I would have been dropped this time for sure. Hopefully I would have been able to come back, but I'd have been dropped.
"This time I was on the limit, but everything played out in our favour as well."
Although there can be no doubt that he has dominated the first two days of sprinting, not to mention coming within a whisker of holding onto his pink jersey on Sunday with a fine seventh place in the time trial as well, Pedersen was also at pains to put things into perspective.
"I want to say also these stages in Albania have suited me really well," he explained. "They are super for me. So of course, it's not easy, but it's much easier to show what good at."
"If we had started the race with one flat sprint and then gone on to today's climbing stage, say, then I might have finished fifth on the first sprint, and it would have been all on today."
"But the first three days in Albania suited me really well and we trained really hard for it as well. It'd have been a very different race if the first stage had been flat."
Pedersen paid massive tribute to how big a role his team had played in both victories as well, pointing out that their hard work had made it possible to eliminate numerous rivals even before the bunch sprint itself and describing up-and-coming Czech teammate Mathias Vacek 'a machine'. Furthermore, he said, the return of longstanding team manager Luca Guercilina after a serious illness to a more proactive role within the squad had been noted across the board and throughout the first half of the year.
"We didn't see him for some years so much because of sickness, but having one guy in control, handling the pressure and how he deals with everyone and staff and so on - that's very important."
" We have more people on the team, more training camps, every small detail is looked at - nutrition, clothing, bikes, everything is much more suited to each rider.
"Then just the fact you have more people to look after riders - maybe before each coach had 10 riders, now each one has six or seven - that means less pressure for everyone. And I think that makes a big difference for us right now."
Together with Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), Pedersen is one of the few cobbled Classics racers to be back in action in the Giro d'Italia. He brushed aside one suggestion that he was better than when he took third in Paris-Roubaix and second in the Tour of Flanders, but insisted that he had done all the work necessary to make it to the Giro in optimum condition.
"I took seven days off and I didn't touch the bike, then I did some endurance work," he recounted. "These last weeks I did two blocks of training, one day rest and three days with what my coach called it spicy intervals.
"So we made it painful for six days total and we believed enough to be in top shape here."
The question of where Pedersen goes from here in the Giro d'Italia remains to be seen, although another, more traditional kind of sprint awaits the peloton on their return to Italy in Lecce on Tuesday afternoon and Pedersen has already said he wants to try for the points classification long-term. But regardless of what happens on the far side of the Adriatic back in Italy, for Pedersen the Giro d'Italia has already been a resounding success.
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