How the top talents performed in 2023: Mattias Skjelmose - ready for big tasks
Sebastian Lindner
· 03.12.2023
A large bear tattoo is emblazoned on his chest. The animal looks wild and untamed. It is somewhat reminiscent of its bearer's season. After all, Mattias Skjelmose was also almost unstoppable this summer. Between June and August, he gave the competition a run for their money and proved to be hungry for victory.
2023 is already the 23-year-old's third season as a professional with Lidl-Trek. After also winning the overall classification last year by winning the time trial at the Tour of Luxembourg and thus coming to the attention of a wider audience for the first time, he finally made his breakthrough this year in impressive style.
On the Mur, only Pogacar was better than Skjelmose
Mattias Skjelmose celebrated no fewer than seven victories last season. He showed strong early form at the Etoile des Besseges and the Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var in February, winning a stage in a sprint ahead of Neilson Powless.
Hilly terrain suits the Dane. But really steep passages also show his strengths. Like the Mur de Huy, for example. At the Fleche Wallonne, only Tadej Pogacar was able to gain a few metres on the final climb, which was up to 27 percent steep, and cross the finish line ahead of Skjelmose. He also finished in the top 10 in the Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the only rider to do so in all three Ardennes Classics this season.
Long climbs, short climbs - when Skjelmose has a free ride, he can impress everywhere. His good performances in the Ardennes secured him the captain's role for the Tour de Suisse. And there he showed that the team was right to assign him this role. He outsprinted Felix Gall, Juan Ayuso and Remco Evenepoel up to Villars-sur-Ollon, rode solo to his biggest victory to date and took the overall leader's yellow jersey.
A strong Tour de Suisse is followed by a strong Tour de France
He then defended yellow with 2nd and 3rd place on the other mountain stages, riding cleverly and conserving energy as much as possible. He saved 18 seconds on Ayuso in the final time trial. And with his time trial skills, he defended half of that against the Spanish top talent. The Belgian, Evenepoel, was also only able to make up one second on Skjelmose, so that the victory of the man from Copenhagen could no longer be shaken.
And so the Dane, who in the meantime had also taken his country's champion's jersey and finished second against the clock, set off on his first Tour de France with plenty of confidence. Having started as a supporter for Giulio Ciccone in the ultimately successful battle for the mountains jersey, Skjelmose was also given plenty of freedom to go stage hunting.
He made it into a breakaway group four times, twice leading to a top 10 result. On three other stages his daily result remained in single figures. In the end, Skjelmose finished 29th overall, ahead of Ciccone as the best Lidl-Trek rider.
Conclusion: Mattias Skjelmose ready for big tasks
After the Tour, Mattias Skjelmose won a stage of his home tour in Denmark and the Maryland Cycling Classic, and finished the two Canadian Wolrd Tour races in Quebec and Montreal in the top ten. He ended his strong year after the overseas races.
Skjelmose's season started and ended well - and ran almost perfectly in between. Overall, this earned him 13th place in the UCI World Ranking. Apart from Evenepoel, who is three quarters of a year younger than Skjelmose, only older riders placed ahead of him. The Dane shows all-rounder qualities like a Pogacar, just not quite at his level. He will probably never reach that level. Nevertheless, he is ready for his first top 10 result in a Grand Tour next year. All he has to do is shed the wildness of the bear and ride a little more economically.
