From broken collarbone to Tour de France glory: Jonas Abrahamsen on belief, Kristoff’s legacy and Norway’s blind spot

There is a moment in a rider’s life when the dream stops being a picture on the bedroom wall and becomes something you can touch. For Jonas Abrahamsen, that moment arrived on a hot afternoon in Toulouse, head down into a headwind, timing his sprint from a break he had helped forge at kilometre zero, judging it perfectly. 

Abrahamsen has been chasing days like that since he was a teenager. When it finally came, it felt both sudden and inevitable.

Asked by Domestique to sum up his year in a single word, he reached for two and then settled on the one that mattered. “Maybe a lot of ups and downs, but amazing,” he said. “My first victory in Tour de France in a stage, I have dreamed about that since I was 14, 15 years old, so that was amazing.”

The victory was not a stroke of luck. He knew the road would pinch after three or four kilometres. He knew a small gap there could become something larger if the peloton hesitated even for a moment. He also knew the favourites would try to close it anyway, and that the hard part would be hanging on through the repeated surges until the break either snapped or made it to the line.

Inside the final fifty kilometres, he kept his nerve. Van der Poel was charging behind. Mauro Schmid was beside him, the kind of finisher who wins this sort of sprint nine times out of ten. Abrahamsen remembered exactly what it feels like to get it wrong at the Tour. “In 2023, I started the sprint first from 500 metres. I made a mistake and I learned,” he said.

This time, his judgment was right.

The sprint was won long before the final 200 metres. Abrahamsen rationed his efforts, kept his pulls short in the headwind, and made sure his rival shared the work even as the favourites loomed behind. “If I used my energy before the sprint, I could not win,” he said. “I was maybe hoping for a top 10 when I was seeing Van der Poel and the best riders coming up behind, but I know I am pretty good when I come in with breakaways and I have a pretty good sprint.” 

He, waited for the hesitation he was counting on, then jumped once. Even a protester who dashed dangerously across the racing line could not break his concentration. “That was crazy,” he said. “I was so focused to win. It was very good that he was not going inside the road because we were going so fast. It was not good.”

That day in Toulouse becomes clearer when you place it against the season that led to it. Three weeks before the Tour, he left the Belgium Tour with a fractured collarbone. For most riders, that is where the Grand Départ ends. 

Abrahamsen flew to Manchester, asked a specialist for a definitive yes or no, and set about turning yes into reality. “It was nice to have a specialist saying you are good to go or not,” he said. “Not just about myself but also my teammates and for riders in the peloton to be safe.” He got on the turbo the following day. 

“The day after I was on a home trainer; five, six days after I was outside on the road,” he said. “They all could not understand that.” His coach told him it was impossible. Thor Hushovd teased him that it could not be done. He took those words and turned them into fuel.

He needed that stubbornness because the spring had been miserable. “I got sick in Paris-Nice,” he said. “I was feeling pretty bad after shit weather there. Then maybe I started too early to go to races and training again. I just felt shit all the classics period. I had never had so much pain in my legs before.” 

He took a week after Paris–Roubaix to reset, rebuilt, then hit the tarmac hard again before an altitude block. “Pretty shit,” he shrugged. “But it ended very good with the stage win in Tour de France.”

Between setbacks, he continued to bank the kind of results that have become a calling card. He won the Circuit Franco–Belge. He climbed to the chapel in Geraardsbergen with purpose. He stood on the podium at Veneto and finished second at the Maryland Cycling Classic on his first trip to the United States.. These are not global headlines, but they show it was never just that one afternoon in Toulouse.

If his racing is serious, his persona remains disarmingly playful. The Tour stage win turned him into what he calls, with a laugh, “a big superstar” at home. His Instagram following grew from a few thousand to a crowd. 

“That is my hobby, to make reels,” he said. “You have to do something out of cycling. I like to be creative. It is very important for your marketing and for the future.” Sponsors notice when a rider can tell a story around nutrition or equipment and make it travel beyond the usual cycling channels. In a sport that lives on partnerships, that kind of reach matters.

His team’s story matters too. Abrahamsen has been with Uno-X since the Ringriks-Kraft days and watched the project grow from a domestic platform into a WorldTour outfit. He talks about Alexander Kristoff’s influence, who joined the team in 2023, with a gratitude that says as much about the man as it does about the wins. 

“Every time he is in a race he gives everything,” he said. That attitude filtered through the group and gave the young riders a template to follow. With Kristoff gone there is space to lead more often, and responsibility to match it. “We need more riders to take the step to victories,” Abrahamsen said. “We have a lot of good riders coming up.”

The WorldTour promotion did not fall into their laps. It was earned in the sleepless corner of the season when points are counted in Asia and Italy and the margins shrink. Abrahamsen describes the last weeks as hectic, with rivals scoring heavily overnight and pressure rising. Leadership turned up at races, delivered messages about stepping up and stayed until the job was done. 

It landed. So did the long-term belief of sponsors prepared to invest in a way that allowed the team to keep improving rather than simply surviving. Put all of that together and you get a group that was ready when the door opened.

If the international picture looks healthy for Uno-X, the domestic one is harder to explain. The Tour of Norway disappeared from the calendar. Television coverage remains patchy. End-of-year awards drift past cyclists as if they were a niche interest. Abrahamsen tagged the culture minister on Instagram in a mix of exasperation and hope. 

“It is so shit,” he said. “If you do not have a professional race on TV, small children cannot see the stars. It is maybe one million euros. It is nothing for Norway. It is so important for the sport. I do not know what they are doing.” Norway has always loved winter sports. It can love cycling too. A Tour stage win and a first Norwegian top ten overall should count for something.

Jonas Abrahamsen is set to begin his 2026 season with the Omloop Nieuwsblad, spending the majority of January at altitude.