This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 140
Let’s start at the pinnacle. It is a cold, grey Sunday in the Netherlands, and Mattias Skjelmose has found himself in the finale of the Amstel Gold Race. On this April afternoon, after 255-kilometres over Limburg’s punchy climbs, the Lidl-Trek man is approaching the finish line with the two best cyclists on the planet: Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogačar. Between them, the pair have 165 race wins, compared to Skjelmose’s 12. He is the underdog. He should not win the three-up sprint that is about to ensue.
What happens next is a culmination of all the events in the Danish rider’s life up until this very moment. It is 150 metres and 20 seconds of cycling that both changes and solidifies everything that Skjelmose has ever thought possible. He sits on the back wheel of the world champion – out of sight and out of mind – before getting out of the saddle and pedalling, his face set into a determined grimace. As the trio fan across the road and the shutter on the finish line camera snaps, Skjelmose, with a final lunge, edges his wheel in front. He covers his mouth with one hand and he shakes his head in disbelief. It is confirmed over the race radio that he, the man who no one believed could, has won. Then, there are the tears.
“I knew I won, but I was in disbelief that I beat Tadej. I beat him at his own game. My mind tried to comprehend what happened and then it was just pure emotions. It was like being high – I’ve actually never been high – but it was the most crazy feeling I’ve ever had in my whole life,” Skjelmose reflects, now seven months on from that momentous day.
“I was not the strongest rider, that was clear. I was honest about that, I didn’t cheat anyone. But they underestimated me, Tadej didn’t look at me once. He only focused on Remco, it was his mistake that day. It’s not that I’m a better bike rider than him, I just didn’t put a foot wrong.”
To truly understand who Mattias Skjelmose is and what that Amstel victory meant, though, we need to come down from cycling’s top table, with its podium champagne and flashing lights, and start at the very beginning. We need to go back to the flat, barren landscapes around Copenhagen that Skjelmose trained through as a skinny teenager and the afternoons on the sofa watching the Tour de France on television with his grandfather. According to the Dane, these are the years that defined him.
“Watching the Tour with my grandad, that’s where I got the inspiration to cycle from. For a long time, I didn’t compete because I was never good at anything. When I did start to race, I was always just catching up,” Skjelmose recalls.
“I always dreamed about making it as a cyclist, of course. But when you’re younger, especially when you’re a boy, puberty has a big influence on who is performing and who is not. I think quite early I got a structured training plan and I realised that if I trained more and I tried harder than the others, I could compensate for missing a bit on the puberty part. When I realised that, and got my first win, I started to get really motivated to become a professional.”
Skjelmose does not believe it is talent that has helped him become one of the best puncheurs of his generation. Instead, he argues that the key ingredients to his success have been diligence and perseverance, traits he learned from those around him growing up.
“My step dad, he grew up in foster homes and his parents were drug addicts. Without knowing it, I think I saw how he had become such a good person and that really motivated me. We didn’t miss anything as kids, but it wasn’t a rich family, we drove there if we went on holiday, it wasn’t like we always had the best tablets, or iPhones. Seeing you could build a life for yourself when you didn’t come from a lot, that was nice,” he states.
“I really hate the word talent, because I feel like when somebody tells me I’m talented, it’s saying that something was given to me. It sounds like I didn’t work hard for it. In some cases, yes, I believe someone can be talented to a certain point but I think hard work adds up to so much more than that. I need to train, if I don’t train I cannot compete and I am not going to be one of the best. My work ethic makes up for my lack of talent compared to my competitors.”
Just seven months younger than Remco Evenepoel, Skjelmose regularly raced against the current time trial world champion in his formative years. Evenepoel was at the vanguard of the trend of 18-year-olds who could burst into the professional world and win immediately. Skjelmose, a late bloomer by today’s standards, was not one of those prodigies.
“The junior times were difficult because Remco was miles ahead of everyone. Even though I was on the podium a few times in Nations Cups, my name wasn’t really there. Remco was the one who made the first step directly to the WorldTour. Before him, teams didn’t really look at juniors as much as they do now,” the 25-year-old says.
“I think it can come with a lot of good things, not being the best at a young age. They don’t really learn how to race because they can just drop people, they don’t have to be smart about it. I could never do that so I also had to learn how to race well. I really appreciate that I learned that from a young age.”
Skjelmose is naturally studious and explains he approached bike racing like a subject in school. The work ethic he mentions goes beyond putting in long hours on the bike, but also soaking up every piece of information he can about his sport.
“I like the process a lot more than the actual goal. I enjoy racing but building up to something big is ten times more enjoyable for me. I like to see the development every day, the weight goes down, the shape goes up,” he explains.
“For me, one of my favourite things to do is read studies about everything. I realised how good ChatGPT is for these things, I ask questions and it gives me so many answers which always blows my mind. It’s like having my own professor. I then often read deeper into the articles it references, this is something I love to do.”
The tactical awareness that Skjelmose talks about being forced to perfect through a lack of perceived natural talent is something that still shines through in how he races today. If we take Amstel as the prime example, the Danish rider was hidden throughout the race, following moves without ever exerting unnecessary energy. He is quick to thank his Lidl-Trek teammates for helping him to do this, namely Otto Vergaerde who served as a key domestique. The finishing sprint itself, though, was all down to Skjelmose. His approach was textbook: he sat at the back, waited for his moment, and timed it to perfection. The image of a defeated Tadej Pogačar is one that we rarely get to witness.
“I understand that my win was because he made some mistakes while I did everything right, but it also made me realise that nine out of ten races we just race for second. On that tenth day though, if you do everything right, there is a chance to win,” he says. “When people have hope like this, it is a special thing, a special feeling. It gives you the ability to fight all the time, no matter how many times you are knocked down.”
Both literally and figuratively, Skjelmose is no stranger to being knocked down. He’s a rider who has fought back from countless crashes and injuries, with his career trajectory yo-yoing from highs to lows – sometimes in a matter of days. The big victories make it all worth it, but there have been moments, the 25-year-old admits, where he wondered if it would be possible for him to get back up again.
“When I got sick before the Tour de France last year, I was struggling quite a lot. I had a hard time, I felt a little bit like the team had left me alone,” he remembers. “I think I managed to fight the inner voices which were telling me I wasn’t good enough and keep pushing through. You know, I’ve been the underdog my whole life.
“I can be sad about things, but I know that it’s not going to change anything. I have had a couple of minutes after crashes where I start crying and let it out, but then I’m back on track. It’s shit, last year I had a season when I only crashed once and this year I crashed ten times. There is always going to be good and bad. My Amstel win this year makes up for all the bad. Even if it gets a bit too much with another setback, the feeling I had at Amstel outweighs almost every bit of pain I feel for the rest of the year.”
Not only did Skjelmose’s victory in the Ardennes this season confirm what he’s always thought: that his canny racing style could, on the right day, bring him to the top step of the podium, it also opened his mind to what else might be possible. Beating a rider like Pogačar, even if it was just that one time, means that it can be done – it’s this that the Dane will hold onto.
“I would like to win all three Ardennes races,” he states confidently. “I also still believe that I can do good Grand Tours. I did a phenomenal Vuelta last year [Skjelmose finished fifth on the general classification in 2024] on a course that wasn’t perfect for me. I still believe we can be there. Seeing riders like [Isaac] del Toro and [Florian] Lipowitz, who I compete with and can beat, being right up there motivates me. I haven’t reached that level yet in a Grand Tour, but it motivates me that it will be possible.”
Despite the allure of Grand Tours, Skjelmose stresses he doesn’t see a future where he focuses entirely on three-week long stage races as we see the likes of Jonas Vingegaard do year after year. The Lidl-Trek man likes the shoulder-to-shoulder, argy bargy, explosive battles that come with one-day racing – it’s here where he can harness his race craft.
“My type of rider is a punchy climber. The Ardennes are perfect for a rider like me where I can position myself correctly for the climbs. If I had to miss them, it would take some of the enjoyment out of the sport for me. I think it’s possible to combine them with Grand Tours. I don’t want to sacrifice what I love doing the most.”
Finding time for both the things and people he loves in life alongside bike racing is something that Skjelmose has and will always prioritise. He keeps his inner circle small, he tells me, but never forgets where he came from and the people who raised him. The impending off-season will involve a trip to the UK with his wife – she’ll go to try on wedding dresses for their big day next year, while Skjelmose will go to Scotland on a hiking trip with his mother.
“It’s not often we have time together just me and my mum, my relationship with her is really special,” he says with a smile.
When springtime eventually rolls round again, bringing more chances to follow attacks, make moves and duck through a chaotic peloton, Skjelmose will hope to find the same success as he had this year. Should he manage another victory, his reaction to winning might be a little bit different. His Amstel celebrations were understandably muted due to the shock factor, but now there is more expectation – both from his competitors and Skjelmose himself. In the 2026 Amstel Gold Race, he will not be the underdog, but the defending champion.
“I do feel pressure but pressure is a privilege, so I’m not afraid of it. To a certain point, I like it. I feel that nobody puts more pressure on me than myself. No matter what it is, it can never be worse than what I put on myself,” he says. “But pressure also means somebody believes in you. That’s something I will always appreciate.”
