I’ve always like the Scandinavian way of speaking quite bluntly, and Mads Pedersen has done just that, as he opened up about his feelings on the life of a professional cyclist. 

Speaking ahead of his Tour de France campaign — where the Lidl-Trek man targets the green jersey — the Danish rider spoke frankly about the sport he’s made his life. 

“Cycling is healthy until a certain point,” he said. “After that, it starts to become unhealthy. What we do in professional sport is not healthy.”

“Would I wish for my kids to be professional cyclists? Absolutely not. I would show them all the bad things first, so maybe they would choose something else. For me, it’s about how you’re destroying your own body. If you want to be healthy, go play badminton.”

Certainly, riding three weeks for hours each day in France in a summer that is breaking heat records, does not seem a great idea at the moment! I had a brief glimpse of this life when I was racing on the UCI Asia Tour in the early 2000s – and at the highest level at the tours of Oman and Qatar – and whilst it is very rewarding to see how strong and fit you can become, to go deeper than you thought possible, there’s no doubt that the physical and mental strain is massicve – not to mention emotionally also.

I can’t imagine some of these guys who are in the 30s who started young. Here in Taiwan, when I go to local events, I often see guys I raced with back in the day and can’t believe they’re still at a high level, knowing all the work it takes to get and stay there.

Kudos to them, but Pedersen is right, it’s not healthy after a certain level, and as mentioned, not just physically. If you are ever around a few pros for a decent length of time, you’ll generally fiond that they’re not exactly lighthearted! That mental toll is real.

Let’s look at how pro-level riding messes you up!

The toll of WorldTour cycling can be broken down into a few critical areas:

1. The Toll on the Body

• Extreme Weight Management: To maintain the extreme power-to-weight ratios required to win Grand Tours, riders often train with body fat percentages well below 10%. This level of leanness can compromise bone density and hormone production.
• Destructive Physiology: Professional riders endure brutal, multi-day endurance efforts that deplete their bodies entirely. As Team dsm-firmenich PostNL rider Mads Pedersen noted, the demands of the sport can be thought of as the “destruction of one’s body,” noting it is unsustainable in the long run compared to recreational sports.
• Overuse Injuries: Living as a WorldTour pro requires 24/7 dedication to tracking every metric—diet, weight, and wattage—which often breeds an unhealthy, hyper-obsessive relationship with the sport and one’s body.

2. Physical Danger

• High Speeds and Crashes: Road cycling inherently involves racing on unprotected public roads at breakneck speeds. WorldTour average speeds have risen to “warp speed”, leading to a widely discussed rise in severe peloton crashes and traumatic injuries.

3. Mental Health and Lifestyle

• Chronic Fatigue and Burnout: The calendar is a grueling, 24/7 job that leaves little time for family or personal life. Riders must navigate extreme stress, abstinence, and near-constant physiological suffering.

Sounds fun eh!