'If you believe in yourself, things go 10 per cent better' — Lund Andresen on his spring and his Giro ambitions

If you were to draw up a list of the best transfers of the 2025/26 off-season, Tobias Lund Andresen would come up very quickly. The Danish signing has more than made up for the departures of Olav Kooij and Tiesj Benoot at Decathlon CMA CGM, and he heads to the Giro d'Italia — where he spoke to IDL Pro Cycling in the build-up — in the form of his life.

Andresen — a former cyclo-cross rider, a decent FIFA player and a fan of both Manchester United and Tony Martin — is anything but an overnight success. The product of the Picnic PostNL development programme made his WorldTour debut with that team in 2023 and kept developing steadily.

Initially he was one of the lead-out riders for Fabio Jakobsen — but he overtook him at the Tour of Turkey in 2024. Last season he made his definitive WorldTour breakthrough, and the ambitious Decathlon CMA CGM were quick to act — signing him through to 2028. As a sprinter alongside Kooij, not ahead of him.

That the move worked out for both parties was immediately clear. Andresen returned from Australia to Europe with strong credentials after winning a Tour Down Under stage and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, then finished sixth and seventh in the Opening Weekend and won a stage at Tirreno-Adriatico.

He was not originally due to race the spring Classics at all — but with Kooij missing there was a vacancy, and Andresen filled it more than adequately. A thirteenth place at Milan-San Remo, sixth at E3 Saxo Classic and second at In Flanders Fields followed, before the tank eventually ran dry and he took a short rest.

"I went back to Denmark for a while to spend time with my family, enjoy myself and get a mental reset," the personable Dane explains. "After that we went with the sprint group back to Spain for a training camp, to fine-tune ahead of the Giro and pick up the form again."

"Those results I've already shown are really important for the confidence heading into what's still to come," he continues. "That's certainly not just true for me — it applies to every athlete and really every person in the world. If you have confidence and believe in yourself, things go 10 per cent better in your life," he says, in a characteristically expansive way.

Where Andresen proved his ability to handle the tougher spring races, the Giro sprints are generally flatter this year. "But I've mainly tried to stick to the basics and use the same approach as I did for the Classics — because I think that worked on both fronts."

At Eschborn-Frankfurt he proved the point, surviving the hilly finale as one of the few fast men and winning the peloton sprint in the German city. Behind the leading group of eleven, admittedly. "For me it's always good to have a race stimulus before you start again. I hadn't raced for over a month by then, and it's good to test the legs before the Giro."

In Italy, Andresen is also a strong contender for the purple points jersey — precisely because of that combination of qualities. "If you're there anyway, you might as well go for it. You'd kick yourself in the final week if you're close but didn't do anything for it in the first week. You naturally go for it — though that will probably apply to just about every fast man."

At his team he shares the leadership with GC rider Felix Gall, who is also in good form. "But I get my guys too. We're going with the same lead-out train as at Tirreno-Adriatico, where it went really well. That's Oliver Naesen, Rasmus Søjberg Pedersen, and then Tord Gudmestad as the last man. I'm absolutely buzzing for it!"