"I definitely think this is a race that I can come back to win."
If you search ‘all in’ on your web browser this is the image that now comes up.
Mads Pedersen, our Danish dynamite, gave it absolutely everything he had at Paris-Roubaix today including chasing down a move from pre-race favorites on the infamous and first five-star cobbled sector, Trouée d’Arenberg.
He might have just missed out on a spot on the podium, finishing fourth, but Mads can (and does!) take a lot of positives away from today’s result, his best ever at the fastest ever edition of ‘Hell of the North’.
Read on below for Mads’ post-race reaction from inside the Roubaix Velodrome and take a look through some of our epic images from photographers Dan King and Ross Bell.
I am tried and pretty empty now. That's how it is but I am just happy to finally be able to race the final, or closer to the final, of Paris-Roubaix. I hoped to that today and I did so this is a step in the right direction and hopefully next year, we can take another step up.
Of course, I would have liked to be on the podium but, in the end, the legs were not there for it today. I do definitely think that this is a race that I can come back to win.
I had to spend some energy in the forest to close the gap but the legs were good and that was the moment to try to come back in the race. Alpecin were with three in the group so they had to do most of the work and I just needed to try to survive but Mathieu was super strong today so, chapeau.
Once I was in that group, I was just thinking 'follow, follow, follow' and then hopefully we could make it to a sprint but I also knew that on Carrefour de l'Arbre, they would also go for it. I just had to hope that I could follow and I couldn't in that moment but, as I said, this is a step in the right direction. I managed to race the final so I am quite happy.
