Tr\u00e6en’s route to that yellow jersey began when the then 26-year-old failed a doping test at the Volta a Catalunya in May 2022. The Uno-X rider returned elevated levels of hCG, a hormone that can signal certain cancers. Days later, doctors confirmed a tumour.<\/p>\n
The team doctor told Tr\u00e6en that he had returned a positive for hCG from the Volta a Catalunya by phone. It was a call that arrived just as he was enjoying the best form of his career, having also won the mountains classification at that year’s Tour of the Alps.<\/p>\n
Tr\u00e6en has since admitted the diagnosis initially felt unreal. “I thought it was nonsense at first,” he said<\/a>, before doctors explained what the test result meant. Surgery to remove the affected testicle followed within weeks. A 15mm tumour was found, but caught early enough that Tr\u00e6en avoided chemotherapy altogether.<\/p>\n By the following spring, he was already racing again. Returning to the Tour of the Alps in 2023, the race where his illness had gone undetected a year earlier, he came within a whisker of a stage win. “I raced here last year with cancer and didn’t know it,” he said afterwards, visibly moved to be back competing at the same race.<\/p>\n Wearing red at La VueltaThe comeback did not stop there. In 2024, riding for Bahrain Victorious, Tr\u00e6en won a stage of the Tour de Suisse on the climb nicknamed after Gino M\u00e4der, the young Swiss rider who died in a crash at the same race the year before. “This win was for Gino,” Tr\u00e6en said<\/a>, dedicating the victory to his memory.A year later came the 2025 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/a>, where Tr\u00e6en wore the red leader’s jersey for four stages and finished ninth overall. It was proof that his climbing legs, and his career, had fully returned. Tr\u00e6en played it smart, matching Quinn’s moves and profiting from Lidl-Trek\u2019s hard work to deliver Mads Pedersen the win. “The possibility of wearing the yellow jersey was real,” he said of the closing kilometres, though he was careful not to celebrate before the finish line.<\/p>\n He now leads Quinn by 28 seconds overall, with Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek) third at 3:53. Poga\u010dar sits fourth, 7:53 down, the furthest he has ever trailed in yellow.<\/p>\n For Hushovd and Uno-X Mobility, a team that recruits exclusively from Norway and Denmark, it is a landmark achievement. “We have a different team compared to others,” Hushovd said. “It makes us very proud when we pull off a major goal like taking the Tour de France yellow.”<\/p>\n![\"Torstein](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/torstein-traeen-6a4d2561069f1.jpg@webp.webp\")
2026 Tour de France stage 4 and the yellow jerseyThat form carried Tr\u00e6en, now back at Uno-X Mobility, into the decisive breakaway on stage 4 of the 2026 Tour de France<\/a>. Riding through searing heat, Tr\u00e6en and American rival Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost) were the biggest threats to Tadej Poga\u010dar’s overall lead.<\/p>\n