Ysland the wonderkid
Anne Dorthe Ysland really burst onto the biggest stage in cycling at the start of the 2022 season. It was her first season with Uno-X, and she finished 13th in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. Ysland remembers thinking: “How is this even possible? I was only in my second year as an elite rider, and I felt like a machine.” The young machine, just 20 years old, continued her strong season by being selected for the Tour de France Femmes squad that summer. There, she experienced her favourite memory from her entire cycling career.
“We rode around the Champs-Élysées on the first stage. I was in the breakaway and fighting for points for the mountains jersey, and there were so many people cheering us on. We were racing just before the men were finishing their three weeks, so it was absolutely packed with Danish fans cheering for Vingegaard. In the middle of all the chaos, I also had my parents, grandparents and my boyfriend cheering for me,” Ysland says.
Thor Hushovd, the team’s General Manager, first got to know Ysland years before he joined Uno-X Mobility Cycling, when Ysland was still a junior rider through Equinor’s talent programme. Even back then, he noticed both her energy and the smile and laughter she brought with her. So when he later heard stories about the kind of rider she had become, it matched the impression he already had. On the women’s side, there was even a saying that rainy weather was “Anne-Dorthe type of weather”. One particular story, which he later heard and still remembers well, has stayed with him:
“During the Women’s Tour in Britain in 2022, the weather on the first stage was terrible. Our team, like all the others, was questioning whether it was safe to sprint because of the technical finish. Ysland, though, never had any doubt. She put all that aside and sprinted to 8th place — still her best WorldTour result. For me, that says a lot about the kind of rider Anne Dorthe is,” Hushovd says.