{"id":602597,"date":"2025-11-30T03:49:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T03:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/602597\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T03:49:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T03:49:16","slug":"mads-pedersen-admits-lack-of-focus-cost-him-big-results-earlier-in-his-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/602597\/","title":{"rendered":"Mads Pedersen admits lack of focus cost him big results earlier in his career"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/lidl-trek\" title=\"Lidl-Trek\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lidl-Trek<\/a> leading Dane says that if he could give one piece of advice to his younger self, it would be to take the sport far more seriously from day one. \u201cI\u2019d probably say that I needed to take things more seriously. The team also told me I had to be more focused. I smashed too many front wheels because I rode into other riders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Pedersen explained that his mindset as a neo-pro was often too relaxed, particularly during training camps, and that the lack of discipline inevitably affected his race performances.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI messed around a bit too much when we were on training camps. I missed results because the focus just wasn\u2019t there in the races. So I\u2019d tell myself: keep your focus on what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>From unfocused neo-pro to one of the peloton\u2019s most reliable winners<\/p>\n<p>Those early habits stand in stark contrast to the career he has built since. Pedersen broke through with second place at the Tour of Flanders in 2018 before winning the elite men\u2019s road race at the UCI Road World Championships the following year, becoming Denmark\u2019s first male world champion in the discipline.<\/p>\n<p>What followed has been one of the most consistently productive palmares of the modern era: stage wins in all three Grand Tours, victories at the likes of Gent-Wevelgem, overall titles at Tour de la Provence, the Deutschland Tour and Tour of Denmark, as well as a steady stream of WorldTour one-day successes.<\/p>\n<p>The 2025 season added another substantial chapter. Pedersen claimed his third Gent-Wevelgem title in March, dominated the Giro d\u2019Italia points classification with four stage wins, and later added another points jersey at the Vuelta a Espana alongside a further victory. He also won both the overall and the time trial in Denmark, and took the general classification at Tour de la Provence as part of a campaign that saw him reach double-digit wins before illness brought an early end to his season in October.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lidl-Trek leading Dane says that if he could give one piece of advice to his younger self,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,20358,20359,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-602597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-lidl-trek","10":"tag-mads-pedersen","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602597","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=602597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}