I’m barely through the door. Kit is still on, legs still buzzing from a morning ride. I collapse onto the sofa, grab a coffee, and flick on the Tour of Flanders. And within about thirty seconds, I’m absolutely glued.
Up front: Tadej Pogačar. Mathieu van der Poel. Remco Evenepoel. Wout van Aert. And tucked right in there, with 20 kilometres left to race — Mads Pedersen. Five of the best riders on the planet, going at it on the Flemish cobbles. This is why I love this sport.
I hadn’t thought much about Pedersen before that morning. But something about watching him in that group — composed, calculating, not panicking — made me want to know more. And that’s when I discovered Chasing Cobbles.
Who Is Mads Pedersen?
If you’re not across the name, here’s the short version. Mads Pedersen is a Danish professional racing cyclist who rides for UCI WorldTeam Lidl-Trek, and has won stages in all three Grand Tours — the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a España. He won the men’s road race at the 2019 UCI Road World Championships in Yorkshire in a race that, if you haven’t watched it, absolutely go and find it. Brutal conditions, an unexpected winner, and a sprint finish that shouldn’t have been close but was.
He’s not supposed to be the story in a race with Pogačar and Van der Poel. But somehow, he keeps making himself one.
Chasing Cobbles: The Documentary
The documentary aired on TNT Sports under the title Chasing Cobbles: Mads Pedersen — and it’s one of the best pieces of cycling content I’ve come across in a long time.
The series follows Pedersen’s pursuit of one of cycling’s greatest prizes: a victory in one of the sport’s five monuments. Episode one covers his first attempt at Milan-Sanremo, where he sets out his ambition clearly — a monument win is the one thing missing from his career. As Pedersen himself puts it, it’s “a complete look at a cyclist’s life — not just the personal side, but also what happens behind the scenes and how many people are involved in getting one rider to perform at their best.”
After a fourth place at Sanremo, the motivation is greater than ever, and attention shifts to the Flemish cobbles. Episode three then turns to Paris-Roubaix, Pedersen’s biggest dream, following a frustrating Flanders campaign. The fourth and final episode is perhaps the most honest — the monument victory doesn’t come in 2024, and the Tour de France ends in another violent crash with a fractured shoulder, forcing Pedersen to ask himself whether the crashes, the sacrifices, and the time away from family are really worth it.
That question is what elevates this series above most sports documentaries. It’s not triumphant. It doesn’t wrap neatly. It sits with the doubt.
If you have TNT Sports or access to HBO Max, watch it. All four episodes. It won’t take long, and you’ll finish it differently than you started.
Mads Pedersen in 2025: The Comeback Season
Here’s the thing. After all that pain in 2024, 2025 has been remarkable.
Pedersen won Gent-Wevelgem 2025 after a 55-kilometre solo effort, joining Robert Van Eenaeme, Rik Van Looy, Eddy Merckx, Mario Cipollini, Tom Boonen and Peter Sagan as the only three-time winners of the race. That is some company. He then had an exceptional Giro d’Italia, winning the points classification — the Maglia Ciclamino — with four stage victories across the race, including wins on the opening day in Albania and a dominant finish on Monte Berico ahead of Wout Van Aert.
By August, his 2025 win tally had reached a career-high of 13, sealing the overall at the Tour of Denmark with a third stage win of the week in the final stage to Silkeborg.
Thirteen wins in a season. From a rider who spent the winter asking whether it was all worth it.
A Word on Cycling Documentaries
If Chasing Cobbles got you in the mood for more, Netflix’s Tour de France: Unchained is worth your time too. Three seasons, following the behind-the-scenes story of the world’s biggest race. The show is produced by the same team behind Formula 1: Drive to Survive and follows a similar structure, with eight episodes per season.
Personally, I think Unchained is the better series. Where Drive to Survive sometimes manufactures drama that wasn’t quite there, Unchained has the real thing built in — the cobbles, the crashes, the GC battles. Season one alone was viewed for 36.1 million hours and ranked among the top 10 TV shows in 15 countries following its release. The third and final season, covering the 2024 Tour de France, premiered in July 2025.
Watch that after Chasing Cobbles, and you’ll have a pretty comprehensive picture of what modern professional cycling looks like from the inside.
Why Pedersen Matters
What strikes me most about Mads Pedersen isn’t the wins. It’s the honesty. He races in an era dominated by riders who seem almost superhuman — Pogačar, Van der Poel, Van Aert. He’s not in that bracket, and he knows it. As he put it himself: “I have to accept that there are riders with more talent and quality than me, but that doesn’t mean they are unbeatable, and I’ve proven it.”
That’s not false modesty. That’s someone who has built a career on doing everything right — preparation, sacrifice, self-awareness — and then showing up when it counts.
Sound familiar? It should. It’s what most of us amateur athletes are trying to do, at a very different level.
Have you watched Chasing Cobbles yet? If not, get it on your watchlist this week — you won’t regret it. And if you’re already a Pedersen fan, let me know in the comments or come find me on Instagram at @oli_le_triathlete. I’d love to hear what you made of it.
