Third in the Vélodrome André-Pétrieux, Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) can leave this year’s fast and arduous race both pleased with a career-best result and with the satisfaction, too, of being better placed than any other Roubaix rider who wasn't clad in the faux denim of Alpecin-Deceuninck.
The Lidl-Trek racer crossed the line in Roubaix exactly three minutes after repeat winner Mathieu van der Poel, some 60km after he last saw the World Champion out on the road. The final metres of the race pitted him head-to-head against Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), himself a podium finisher last spring.
Philipsen, however, had the benefit of sitting on wheels in the chase while Pedersen was forced to put in work trying to keep Van der Poel within grasp, and so the Belgian had more than enough speed to complete a second one-two in a row for his team.
After the race, Pedersen said he was delighted to be able to step onto the podium, even if the result brought him two places lower than his dream outcome at the Hell of the North.
"To be honest, I'm really happy. Mathieu was in a different league today and the way he was racing was really impressive," Pedersen said in the post-race press conference.
"For me it's hard to beat Jasper in a normal race sprint so, fuck, magic should happen if I were to beat him in a sprint in a race like today. So I'm happy.
"I have zero excuses today. I was definitely at 100%," he added, referring to his crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen last week, before concluding, "I was beaten by better boys."
Pedersen came into the race as the top favourite after the Alpecin-Deceuninck duo, leading a Lidl-Trek line-up shorn of Jasper Stuyven and Alex Kirsch – both also caught in the Dwars crash – but still filled with talents such as Jonathan Milan, Mathias Vacek, and Tim Declercq.
Milan's involvement in the race may have been sadly brief, with the Italian leaving the race shortly after getting caught in a mass crash within the opening 40km. But Vacek was a valuable aid to Pedersen at the head of the race, putting in work on the front after Pedersen punctured out of the lead group just after the Arenberg.
Pedersen said that having Milan around deeper into the race would've helped him.
"I'm pretty sure it would've changed a lot," he said of his teammate.
"So when he crashed early in the race it was shit for us and a pain in the ass. We can't change it. I haven't talked with him yet, but I hope he's ok.
"But in the chase, everyone was basically going flat out because we wanted to catch [Van der Poel] again," Pedersen added.
"At one point when he was just gaining time and gaining time, we were kind of doing a second race behind. We also wanted to make a selection in our group, make it smaller and smaller.
"Everyone was committed and going flat out- maybe he'd have a puncture or whatever, so you never know… The race is not over when he leaves, but today it was."
Once Van der Poel had blasted off 60km from the finish on the three-star sector of Orchies, Pedersen found himself racing alongside Philipsen, Nils Politt (UAE Team Emirates), and Groupama-FDJ duo Laurence Pithie and Stefan Küng.
The latter pair would fall away before the finish, with Pithie crashing out of the group and Küng dropped on the final approach to Roubaix.
The slimmed-down group left Pedersen with his best-ever chance of making the podium, one he duly took against the weaker sprinter Politt.
"We were still going all out in the final," he said. "Philipsen went on the sector after the Carrefour de l'Arbre and then Kung got dropped so there were only three of us left. From then on, Jasper wanted to pull.
"At that moment I also knew that Jasper is a tough guy to beat, and he also had spent a few kilometres on the wheels where we were pulling. So, it was also kind of settling in to sprint for third."
"I knew that Nils was on the limit but so was I. I trusted my sprint enough to know that it was possible to beat Nils at least."
172 men set out in Compiègne with the dream of winning Paris-Roubaix on Sunday morning. Mads Pedersen beat 169 of them. And as for working out how to add Mathieu van der Poel to that list? That'll have to wait.
"Today I tried to do better, but [Van der Poel] was impressive, and I just couldn't follow. So how to beat him in a Monument? I just don't know yet."
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