Uno-X Pro Cycling Team

[Samu Cuenca]

If they are to qualify within the next three year cycle, they certainly need more additions to the team. Only Kristoff doesn't cut it. I wonder if it was a money issue, or they just didn't get the riders they wanted? Because there were several really good Danish riders available last fall.

And regarding that; Tobias Foss says in an interview that he is tempted by riding for Uno X.

Tobias Foss må vente: - Vil ikke legge opp uten å ha syklet Tour de France

HAFJELL: Giro d'Italia - ikke Tour de France - blir verdensmester Tobias Foss' store mål i 2023. Nå åpner han døren for Uno-X-retur i 2024.

www.tv2.no

Half of the ProTeam contracts expire after 2023, so you'd expect there to be a lot of transfer activity later this year. Kristoff must also have been their biggest investment yet. But if they manage to receive a TdF invite they'll probably also be able to up their budget moving forward.

 

[DNP-Old]

A well deserved TDF invitation. Hope to see Tobias and possibly Anders there, but man, those knees worry me.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

Bring it on!
I expect Kristoff, Halland Johannesen, Tiller, Gregard and Skaarseth to be in. Then the last three spots are open.
Træen, Eg, Charmig, Andersen, Abrahamsen, Wærenskjold are the ones I except to be in the battle.

 

[MADRAZO]

Bring it on!
I expect Kristoff, Halland Johannesen, Tiller, Gregard and Skaarseth to be in. Then the last three spots are open.
Træen, Eg, Charmig, Andersen, Abrahamsen, Wærenskjold are the ones I except to be in the battle.

I agree with the first 5 but would considder Træen fairly certain also. He is someone that needs to try a Grand Tour now

The others are all solid candidates too, though perhaps they will feel Waerenskjold is too young. I think they might prefer a few more GT-experienced riders also so I guess they go with Lasse Norman Hansen also as one of Kristoffs-leadouts and then likely Eg with his experience will be the favourite for the final spot, even if Charmig would be a better pick. Finally I guess Urianstad will also be a candidate if they as a Wild Card team want to focus on a lot of suicide breakaways, with him also capable as part of their leadout.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

I haven't seen anything from Norman Hansen during the last season that says he's a competent leadout even if I thought he was going to be good at it. I think Wærenskjold or Fredheim are the best leadout, but both are very young and maybe not Tour ready. I think the sprint plan will be to have Skaarseth and Tiller trying to place Kristoff at a decent wheel and then just hope he can get good results on his own.

I think they will pick atleast 2 danes, so I'm guessing Eg is the best good candidate unless Bendixen shows himself to be a great leadout.

Tactics:
Sprint stages: Try to position Kristoff in a decent position with 1 km to go and let him try his luck.
Hilly stages: Try to position THJ in the final.
Mountain stages: Send climber guys (THJ, Greegard, Træen, Eg etc) in breaks
Easier breakaway stages: Send climber guys or Skaarseth/Tiller in breaks

I'm pretty sure THJ will not race GC but it wouldn't surprise me if he sits in top 10 after the first 6 stages.

 

[RedheadDane]

Small correction; it's Lasse Norman Leth now, he's gotten married. Or, you could make it easier for yourselves, and refer to him as how he's always been referred to; simply Lasse Norman.

Fun fact: Kristoff has more GTs under his belt - or should that be under his bib? - than the rest of the team combined! Of course, he's also five years older than the second oldest on the team, and is the only of their riders officially classified as "old". Well... "officially" based on my classfication!

 

[pastronef]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1610668168216813568

View: https://twitter.com/faustonef/status/1610668168216813568

 

[tobydawq]

Small correction; it's Lasse Norman Leth now, he's gotten married. Or, you could make it easier for yourselves, and refer to him as how he's always been referred to; simply Lasse Norman.

Fun fact: Kristoff has more GTs under his belt - or should that be under his bib? - than the rest of the team combined! Of course, he's also five years older than the second oldest on the team, and is the only of their riders officially classified as "old". Well... "officially" based on my classfication!

I'll call him Jørgen Leth.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1610668168216813568

View: https://twitter.com/faustonef/status/1610668168216813568

I understand their point, but Uno-X are clearly the most futuristic petrol station chain in Norway, they are making big infrastructural changes to their stations focusing on quick chargers for electrical cars and their car wash stuff also have the official environmental friendly government brand “Svanemerket”, which is not something that all their competitors have.
So even if Uno-X clearly is a petrol company, they are also one of the front runners for a greener change in that business.

 

[RedheadDane]

I'll call him Jørgen Leth.

It's a well-known fact that you're weird.

 

[pastronef]

I understand their point, but Uno-X are clearly the most futuristic petrol station chain in Norway, they are making big infrastructural changes to their stations focusing on quick chargers for electrical cars and their car wash stuff also have the official environmental friendly government brand “Svanemerket”, which is not something that all their competitors have.
So even if Uno-X clearly is a petrol company, they are also one of the front runners for a greener change in that business.

I am fine with everything. I am just highlighting the massive bias, mostly on twitter, by some fans, welcoming the wild card for UNO-X
if that was an anglo team they would be butchered as Ineos did.
fans use the environmental stance as a stick to beat teams they dislike. nothing more than that.
British Cycling had big critics for taking Shell as a sponsor. the same hysterical fans having a go at them, welcome Uno-X who was owned by Shell.
madness

 

[Breh]

Whats with the British persecution complex?

Nobody cares about twitter, let alone random people on twitter.

 

[Anderis]

I am fine with everything. I am just highlighting the massive bias, mostly on twitter, by some fans, welcoming the wild card for UNO-X
if that was an anglo team they would be butchered as Ineos did.
fans use the environmental stance as a stick to beat teams they dislike. nothing more than that.
British Cycling had big critics for taking Shell as a sponsor. the same hysterical fans having a go at them, welcome Uno-X who was owned by Shell.
madness

Is it actually established that those were the same individuals?

Because one common cognitive bias I often see is that people complain that "oh, when xxx happened, then people said yyy and now the situation is similar but they are saying zzz". The thing is that you cannot expect a group of random people to have consistent opinions because it's not a hypocrisy when one person says one thing on one ocassion and then another person says another thing on another occasion. They're just two unconnected cases of two different people presenting two different views on two different occasions and it's not a reasonable expectation either if you expect that if one person has said something on once ocassion, then they need to be vocal in every subsequent discussion on every similar case, nobody has time and attention for that.
Of course hypocrites do exist but always make sure it's exactly the same person who presented a contradictory attitude and not an undefined group of people before calling that out.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

Yesterday Uno-X went public wishing to get a second name sponsor. They are looking for a company "with roots in Scandinavia with Europe as target market". The demands is about 5m Euros a year for atleast 3 years. Uno-X side of the budget is around 10m, so if they could increase to 15m yearly budget that will surely lay foundations for being competitive against WT-teams.

In an interview with Norwegian TV2, Haugland says they have 5 main transfertargets for next season: Foss, Leknessund, Hvideberg, Hoelgaard and Bystrøm. All of them have contracts that runs out after 2023 and the first 4 have already been riding for Uno-X and have great connections with organisation.

As now they have 15 riders signed for 2024:
1 ABRAHAMSEN Jonas
2 ANDERSEN Idar
3 BENDIXEN Louis
4 FREDHEIM Stian
5 GUDMESTAD Tord
6 JOHANNESSEN Anders Halland
7 JOHANNESSEN Tobias Halland
8 KRISTOFF Alexander
9 KULSET Johannes (will be promoted from Dare)
10 KULSET Magnus
11 LEVY William Blume
12 LØLAND Sakarias Koller (will be promoted from Dare)
13 SANDER HANSEN Marcus
14 SKAARSETH Anders
15 TILLER Rasmus

I expect them to want retain Wærenskjold, Træen, Greegard and Charmig.
That takes us to 19 riders.

Then I expect between 3 - 5 new signings from the group of Foss, Leknessund, Hvideberg, Hoelgaard & Bystrøm. It seems to me no established Danish rider is availible after 2023 season.

That leaves 6-8 spots to retain riders from this group: Holter, Eg, Resell, Blikra, Sindre Kulset, Hindsgaul, Dversnes and Urianstad.
I expect Norman Leth, Niklas Larsen and Kristoffer Halvorsen to leave, as they have all been a disappointment to me. But if they have a good season they might jump to the group above and be possible.

It is also possible that Simon Dalby and Carl Fredrik Bevort from the development team will be candidates for a spot in the ProTeam already in 2024, but as they are both born in 2003 I'd give them the 2024 season still at the Dev team and then aim to promote them for 2025 if the development goes the right way.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

According to TV2, Jonas Abrahamsen had a horrible crash at training today. During sprint training his chain jumped off at about 70 km/h and the tongue blocked his breathing after his crash before two of his team mates were able to open up. Sounds like it was dramatic situation, but luckily it looks like all is fine now.

I guess it will take some extra weeks before he makes his first race this season.

 

[Skijumper Roglic fan]

Just noticed Hulgaard retired on December 31, 2022…

Morten Hulgaard

Morten Hulgaard (born 1998-08-23) is a former professional road racing cyclist from Denmark, active between 2015 and 2022. His best results are 3rd place in Sparkassen Münsterland Giro and 3rd place in GC Tour Poitou - Charentes en Nouvelle Aquitaine.

www.procyclingstats.com

They finally go to the Tour now, and Hulgaard was among the Top-10 of Europe‘s best time trialists kn 2022 (8th at ECs), so this comes as a surprise.

Anyone knows the reasons?

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Just noticed Hulgaard retired on December 31, 2022…

Morten Hulgaard

Morten Hulgaard (born 1998-08-23) is a former professional road racing cyclist from Denmark, active between 2015 and 2022. His best results are 3rd place in Sparkassen Münsterland Giro and 3rd place in GC Tour Poitou - Charentes en Nouvelle Aquitaine.

www.procyclingstats.com

They finally go to the Tour now, and Hulgaard was among the Top-10 of Europe‘s best time trialists kn 2022 (8th at ECs), so this comes as a surprise.

Anyone knows the reasons?

He wasn't a bad TTer, but he obviously only finished in the top 10 because the competition wasn't the best.
Uno-X didn't offer him a new contract, and he didn't get/pursued other opportunites. I don't know what his future plans are, but it sounded like it wasn't the end of the world for him to end his career now.

 

[tobydawq]

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/is-the-new-uno-x-time-trial-helmet-the-wildest-one-yet/

ASO should withdraw their Tour wildcard effective immediately.

 

[Dk one]

The helmet is pretty ‘wild’ though.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Makes sense from a sideview.

And looks like Spaceballs from any other angle.

 

[RedheadDane]

New UCI rule:

"During time trialling events, riders from the Uno-X team(s) shall only be filmed from the side. Any failure at upholding this rule shall result in immediate disqualification from the race of the offending photographer.
If it is absolutely necessary to film one of the riders from any other angle, artistic close-ups of their legs are to be used."

 

[Norbea]

Must be hard for the developers to put so much time and effort into the helmet, just to see the rider not bothering to shave his mustache

 

[laarsland]

To be fair, most of Erik's Resell-value is in the tache.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Must be hard for the developers to put so much time and effort into the helmet, just to see the rider not bothering to shave his mustache

Campenaerts tested that in the windtunnel and said a moustache was better. No joke.

 

[Barkintheeye]

I am fine with everything. I am just highlighting the massive bias, mostly on twitter, by some fans, welcoming the wild card for UNO-X
if that was an anglo team they would be butchered as Ineos did.
fans use the environmental stance as a stick to beat teams they dislike. nothing more than that.
British Cycling had big critics for taking Shell as a sponsor. the same hysterical fans having a go at them, welcome Uno-X who was owned by Shell.
madness

What fans are criticizing cycling teams for being sponsored by eg Shell, Esso etc? Those are people I'd call activists, not fans.