RAINBOW DREAMS

Mads Pedersen is describing the final kilometre of the 2019 World Championships road race, upon Procycling’s request, and he’s back in the moment. The final, frenetic kilometres of a spectacularly wet and gruelling day saw him weighing up the options against Italy’s Matteo Trentin and Switzerland’s Stefan Küng. Küng, you might think, would be less of a worry than the fast-finishing Trentin, who has won bunch sprints in the past, and had ridden a flawless race up to that point.

“I was 100 per cent sure that Matteo Trentin would beat me in the sprint,” Pedersen says of his Italian rival, who eventually had to settle for the silver medal. “That’s also why I took the lead. Plus there was still a small chance for me to win the race, as I knew that when I had the lead in the last kilometre, I could decide the tempo in the corners, so they wouldn’t surprise me there, and if we had a crash, they wouldn’t hold me up.”

Küng pulled aside to let Pedersen through to the front with exactly a kilometre left to race. All three riders were clearly exhausted, but the 23-year-old Dane was still thinking, calculating, concentrating. The weather and conditions on the Harrogate circuit and loop out to the Dales may have been wet and wild, but Pederson’s only chance was to keep a clear and cool head.

“I also knew, with Küng then on the back, Trentin in the middle and me on the front, that Küng would have to come from a