Mads Würtz Schmidt on his transition from WorldTour to gravel

With Pace

Payson McElveen

Photography, Interviews, Adventure, Basketball, Mountain Biking, Outdoors, Entrepreneur, Athletes, Culture, Current Events, Inspirational, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Sports, Gravel Biking, Gravel Cycling, Celebrities, Cycling

4.8 • 767 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2026

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mads Würtz Schmidt might be a newcomer to gravel, but he’s already established himself as one of the best in the world. The 31-year-old Danish rider went all in on the sport last year with little financial support and ended up winning the Traka, becoming the European Gravel Champion, and snagging fourth at Unbound. This year, he’ll be racing alongside Keegan Swenson and Matt Beers as part of the new Specialized off-road team. Mads joined Payson in Girona to talk about his reluctant depa...

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Pace McElvin and this is the WithPace podcast.
0:11.8	So 2025, even with the success I had, it cost us more money than like we had. We had to dig into our savings it's been a year in with red
0:23.5	numbers on the yeah yeah yeah then it started to look more bright and then the discussions with
0:28.4	specialized started and and we could like i want tracker and and then from there it became like a real
0:36.3	thing that we could like i could make this into a living again.
0:44.3	Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Madsword Schmidt on the podcast today. I've been wanting to get this guy on the pod ever since he started crushing gravel races last year.
0:56.7	Not necessarily because he was crushing gravel races.
1:00.3	That's part of it.
1:01.0	But also why he even started racing gravel in the first place.
1:05.3	He had a successful career in the world tour.
1:09.1	Lots of great results.
1:10.7	Won some big races. Had a really,
1:13.1	really promising handful of results as a U-23, including being world champion. But here he is,
1:21.8	theoretically, in the prime of his athletic years, racing gravel. And I'd kind of heard through the Great Vine some
1:28.4	rumors about why that was the case. But I had a feeling there were some good stories there.
1:33.0	And I'm really glad he was game. We've been trying to coordinate to get out on a training ride
1:38.5	recently too. But if there's one thing that's harder than scheduling a podcast with bike racers,
1:46.3	it's getting bike racers training schedules to align.
1:49.6	So we haven't gotten out on a ride yet, but he came over to the apartment here and
1:54.8	was just so refreshingly open and well spoken.
2:00.4	And it was really just everything I hoped it would be.
2:03.9	He's been on quite the podcast tour as of late. Of course, there are a lot of people asking about
	...

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