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Follow us on GoogleMagnus Cort Nielsen — who had him down for stage 2 of the Volta a Catalunya? Maybe a year ago, yes, but after a very difficult period the Dane had slipped out of the spotlight for a while. Until Uno-X Mobility pulled off a little Milan-Sanremo imitation on Tuesday, very much in the style of UAE Emirates-XRG and Tadej Pogacar. It handed Cort an opportunity he simply could not miss.
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We had not really seen Cort and his magnificent moustache at the front of a race since 1 May 2025, when he finished second in Eschborn-Frankfurt. This year, he had managed only a seventh place in a stage of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, but those are of course not the kind of results we have come to expect from the now 33-year-old veteran.
Cort has already won 34 races in his career, including stage victories in all three Grand Tours. Even so, this stage win on day two of the Volta a Catalunya may have felt almost just as special. “I got sick last year in the Tour de France, but decided to keep fighting. That turned out to be a bad decision,” Cort explained in the flash interview.
“I only had two race days after the Tour and afterwards I just couldn’t get it going again in training either. This is the first time I’ve been good again since almost a year ago, so it’s been a difficult year,” the Dane continued. He even seemed a little surprised by his stage win himself. “I’m happy that I can win again.”
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Uno-X had to bring Cort all the way back to the front
In the final kilometres of the stage, Cort was no longer thinking about victory at all. “It was a typical stage here, with a lot of fighting for position, and normally I don’t really like that. So I was a bit further back.” Anton Charmig, Cort’s lead-out man, confirmed the same to Eurosport. “Magnus was in the second group at the bottom of the final descent.”
“They told me I had to sprint, but suddenly Magnus was back there again,” said Charmig, who then had to switch instantly and delivered his leader perfectly for the sprint. “He told me to go and I dropped him off well into the final corner. That’s cycling too, where you have to adapt right up until the last moment.”
It sounds simple, but Cort made clear just how precarious his situation was in the run-in to the sprint of a stretched-out peloton. “I have no idea how Anders Skaarseth managed to bring me from last position to first in one and a half kilometres. In the end I still had Anton, who delivered me perfectly. It was really amazing teamwork.”
After UAE did the hard labour for Pogacar in Milan-Sanremo by bringing him from deep in the bunch all the way to the front on the Cipressa, Uno-X basically did the same in Catalunya. Cort was grateful, not least because he was finally racing in Catalunya. “I lived here for a long time and trained here a lot. For me, this feels like winning at home. That’s why I’ve wanted to race here for years, with lots of finishes like this one. They suit me.”
Bram van der PloegEditor-in-chief
Bram van der Ploeg (35) is the proud founder of In de Leiderstrui, IDL Pro Cycling's parent site, launched in 2018. Finally, he could create stories about the sport he had followed since childhood. He is the editor-in-chief on paper, but prefers to be with his recorder next to a rider, a team bus, or in the mud at a cyclocross race. Every year, from February to the end of May, Bram follows the entire Italian cycling season, from the Trofeo Laigueglia to the Giro d'Italia, with the grand finale in October in Lombardy. During that time, he lives in Tuscany, where he has since come to call Italy his 'home'.
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Latest Comments
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- Five days in breaks with no stage win is a painful stat. The team had chances, but they need to turn those opportunities into results.julien10-11-2026
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- What a mess. The report makes it sound as though nobody properly explained the decision, and that’s hard to defend.jennifer1910-11-2026
- I’m still learning the rules: does moving left in a sprint automatically bring a penalty, or does it depend on whether the other rider is blocked? It sounds like Brand wasn’t impeded here.patriciaw10-11-2026
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