{"id":188533,"date":"2025-06-16T08:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T08:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/188533\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T08:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T08:36:13","slug":"pedersen-is-not-a-bad-rider-but-hes-not-a-good-one-either-and-certainly-not-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/188533\/","title":{"rendered":"Pedersen is not a bad rider, but he’s not a good one either and certainly not great"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger De Vlaeminck<\/a> and Eddy Merckx<\/a> were the overlords of late 1960s and 1970s, winning 400+ races among the two. Those feets put them on top of the all-time ranking of cycling legends.Mads Pedersen<\/a> left a strong impression at the recent Giro d’Italia after an already strong spring, but how do the two men view his achievements? That is discussed in Het Nieuwsblad<\/a>\u00a0debate:\u00a0“They’re hyping him up because he won a few stages at the Giro d’Italia. But he can’t win a time trial, and he can’t win a mountain stage. To me, that doesn’t make you a super rider. What has Pedersen won so far?” De Vlaeminck asks annoyedly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Merckx then jumps to the defense of the 2019 world champion. “Careful. Gent-Wevelgem, three times. And if he doesn’t crash at the wrong moment this year, I’d like to see him in Paris-Roubaix. And he was strong in the Giro.”<\/p>\n

De Vlaeminck is not impressed by any of that. While he won the Paris-Roubaix and Tour of Flanders for a combined amount of seven times. In the era of overlord Merckx, De Vlaeminck was able to rack up impressive 162 professional victories including six times the GC at Tirreno-Adriatico. And not just that.<\/p>\n

“I won 22 stages at the Giro d’Italia and still finished fourth overall,” he counters to Mads Pedersen’s four stage wins at this year’s Giro d’Italia.<\/p>\n

People comparing Tadej Pogacar to Merckx also gets on the nerve of De Vlaeminck: “I’m not going to talk about Eddy. How many times did he win the Giro? Five times? Pogacar will have to hurry.”<\/p>\n

So what is the Belgian’s assessment of Pedersen, the second man on this year’s UCI ranking so far? “I’m not saying Pedersen is a bad rider, but he’s not a good one. And he’s certainly not great. That’s my honest opinion, and that’s the truth,” he concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roger De Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx were the overlords of late 1960s and 1970s, winning 400+ races among…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-188533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114692134227954705","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}