At Sunday’s Tour of Flanders, keep an eye out among the sturdy crew of Lidl-Trek riders shielding, supporting and teeing up Mads Pedersen for a tall, blonde Swede by the name of Jakob Söderqvist. The team believes the 22-year-old could be Pedersen’s long-term successor. That, of course, motivates an ambitious Söderqvist, who’s already had notable success on his time trial bike, not least winning the U23 World Championships last September in Kigali, Rwanda. “How I distribute power comes naturally to me which made time trialling an earlier speciality, but I’d like to progress to become a Classics specialist,” he told Escape Collective in a recent interview.

But Söderqvist has another – and entirely different – motivation to be the best possible bike rider he can be, perhaps to become the first Swede since Magnus Bäckstedt won Paris-Roubaix in 2004 to triumph in a major Cobbled Classic. Every time he rides – in a race, while training, or just recreationally – he does so for one of his best friends and regular cycling partners, Vilgot Lindh.

Lindh “was one of the kindest humans that I ever met,” said Söderqvist. “He was always the one, I think, who most enjoyed cycling and developing and trying to become better. I haven’t met anyone else who did it with so much joy, which was truly an inspiration.”

But that inspiration is indelibly marked by tragedy. In October 2022, Söderqvist – 19 at the time – found Lindh dead at home, an event Söderqvist called “the scariest moment of my life.” It was also one that had a profound effect on his own approach to racing and life.

“Vilgot was the same age as I am now – 22 years old – and we were really just simple people: no one had a big sponsor or was earning anything, we were just doing it as our biggest passion and he was enjoying it so, so much,” Söderqvist recalled, opening up for the first ever time in public about the loss of his friend.

This article was originally published by Escape Collective in April 2026. To read the full article click here.