Vingegaard has not sat on a bike since the surgery that followed his Tour de France crash, and he has yet to say whether he will race again in 2026.
Pedersen, his Danish compatriot, is not waiting for that answer before making his own case.
“I hope we get to make use of him at the Worlds. I hope his collarbone heals enough, and I am speaking from experience here, Jonas: your collarbone will be healed by the time we race the Worlds,” the 2019 world champion said on the Lang Distance podcast, in comments carried by CyclingUpToDate.
The Lidl-Trek rider knows the injury from the inside. He broke his own collarbone in a February crash at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana and needed surgery before returning to racing.
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Vingegaard non-committal on Montreal
The Team Visma | Lease a Bike leader fractured his collarbone on stage 15 of the Tour de France, ending a Giro-Tour double attempt in which he was sitting second overall behind Tadej Pogacar.
Team sporting director Marc Reef confirmed the surgery had gone smoothly, telling TV 2 Sport it “wasn’t the most complicated operation you can have.”
Asked directly about Montreal, Vingegaard would not commit.
“I actually don’t know yet, it depends on how the collarbone reacts, and how it heals, and how it recovers. It’s not out of the question for me, but I also don’t want to say now that it’s going to happen.”
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He also flagged how much the season had drained him.
“I needed a break after the Tour. It’s been a tough year and a tough bike race, so in any case I needed a break because there’s been so much.”
273km and 3,800m of climbing
Pedersen’s timeline is arithmetically correct. The stage 15 crash came in mid-July, and the men’s elite road race in Montreal falls on 27 September, roughly ten weeks later.
What waits at the end of that recovery is anything but forgiving. The Worlds road race covers 273.7km with more than 3,800m of climbing, finishing on 12 laps of a 13.4km circuit around Mount Royal that includes the Voie Camillien-Houde climb and ramps steeper than 11%.
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It is a course tailored to a rider like Pedersen. Vingegaard has until the 27 September start line to decide whether he will be there.
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