Mads Pedersen’s Vuelta is done. Lidl-Trek confirmed on Wednesday that the Dane would not start stage 11 to Lorca, and the official race roster now shows the team down to seven riders. Pedersen had been dropped from the peloton 30 kilometres from the finish on Tuesday’s tenth stage and rolled in 163rd, fifth from last.

Illness had been the underlying problem for weeks. Pedersen flagged a sore throat on his own podcast, Long Distance, during the rest day, an issue picked up by Domestique Cycling.

The exit had been on the table since Tuesday night. After stage 10, Pedersen told Eurosport that the numbers were simply not there.

“You know it’s not the shape. The shape is good enough, but something is clearly not as it should be,” he said.

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“So I think now is the time to really look at it, instead of saying ‘in a few days, maybe…'”

“My legs were just good enough to get dropped”

Speaking to reporters, Pedersen was blunt about what the ride had told him.

“My legs were just about good enough to get dropped,” he said.

“It was more one of those days where there simply wasn’t enough there to race the finale, so staying in and completely emptying myself when I knew I wasn’t going to be involved in the finish doesn’t make much sense right now.”

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The Dane came into the race as one of the biggest names in the sprint field, having taken the green jersey at the Tour de France earlier this season. Being distanced on stage 10’s late climb was the moment the alarm sounded.

“Otherwise, even on a bad day, I would still be there in a finale like this. So yes, there is something that isn’t working at the moment, but we believe it will get better.”

Montreal is the reason

Pedersen’s next race is the elite men’s road race at the UCI Road World Championships in Montreal, scheduled for 27 September. The finishing circuit around Mount Royal, with 13.4-kilometre laps and sections above 11%, is billed as terrain that would suit the 2019 world champion.

He had wanted to keep racing through Spain to sharpen for it.

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“I still believe that it will turn, and it’s still a long way to Granada, and I still believe this is a good preparation for World Championships,” he told Eurosport on Tuesday night.

By Wednesday morning the calculation had flipped. Lidl-Trek pulled him out ahead of stage 11’s start in Cartagena, leaving 25 days between the abandonment and the elite men’s road race in Montreal.

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