'People love the Champions League'; why WorldTour promotion could be gamechanger for Uno-X and their stars

Jonas Abrahamsen managed to follow up his good Tour performance in the 2024 edition last year with a stage win in Toulouse. On that footing, the 30-year-old Norwegian is all too eager to continue next year, after he didn't quite pan out last spring. IDLProCycling had a conversation with Abrahamsen.

These days in Trondheim, Uno-X is holding the open and team days towards 2026, which will be anything but a special year in the team's history. For the first time the Norwegian formation is part of the WorldTour, partly due to Abrahamsen's good performance in recent years.

'It is very important for Norwegian - and by extension Scandinavian - cycling,' points out the hard rider. 'People love the Champions League, the highest level. There's a lot of talk about it, in Norway.'

Abrahamsen thinks the entire Uno-X team can hitch a ride on the move. ''It's very good for the rest of the team. The past two years we rode one grand tour, but now a lot more riders can ride a grand tour. And that's good for the development of the team. Our calendar expands a lot, whereas before we had to pick our races.''

It also makes a difference for Abrahamsen himself, "I would be up for a combination of Tour and Vuelta. To include the Giro, as a classc type of rider, is probably a bit too much of a good thing. Then you do the classics, Giro ánd Tour.'

'So my preference would be the Vuelta, but first I want to show myself in the classics. Also in races like Strade Bianche and Milan-Sanremo, but definitely Flanders and Roubaix. I'm really going to those races with a lot of ambition.'

In the Tour de France , he sees slightly fewer opportunities than last season. 'In the last two weeks I do see some opportunities for us punchy riders. Which stage suits me best, I can't say right now. But I think I'm going to focus a bit more on the last two weeks, as I did - unintentionally - this year.'

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