At one point, it all became too much for Abrahamsen. “As a junior, I was quite good, but as a promising rider, I didn’t develop at all. In retrospect, I was asking far too much of my body. I never considered quitting cycling, but it was difficult to find a team every year. I wasn’t getting the best results and had to send emails to teams every year asking if they still had a spot for me.”
After two and a half years of working, Abrahamsen noticed his career was heading in the wrong direction. “I was constantly tired. I trained too hard, ate too little, and worked too much. But I learned a lot from that time. One of the things I learned was that I have to listen to my body. I couldn’t work a whole week and eat very little and train at full throttle.”
Jonas Abrahamsen beats Mauro Schmid in a sprint for victory of the stage 11 at the 2025 Tour de France
Uno-X trusted in Jonas
That was when he made the decision, quit his job and signed up for the new Uno-X project in 2017. His performance curve immediately spiked up. With that level Abrahamsen was never let go by the Norwegian team, including during its promotion in 2020. Back then, Abrahamsen was already 25 years old and was still classified as puncheur/climber. However his results wouldn’t raise an eyebrow of most cycling fans.
“I’ve mentioned it before, but back then I was still a climber who always wanted to be as light as possible.”
Then a change in mentality and approach came. Abrahamsen spent more than a year putting on weight and mainly muscle, transforming the once fragile puncheur into one of the most feared flat engines in the peloton. It was a gamble but one that paid off massively as Abrahamsen would go on to wear multiple distinctive jerseys at the Tour de France and finally also won a stage in 2025.
“Every year I gained a little muscle mass. That’s how I was able to win a Tour de France stage.”
With that, he fulfilled a childhood dream. “The next dream is to win Paris-Roubaix or the Tour of Flanders. A podium would be fantastic, but the dream, of course, is to win. Van der Poel and Pogacar are incredibly strong, but when I have a good day and they have a bad one, you never know in cycling.”