Danish sprinter and time-trial specialist Emma Norsgaard has signed a two-year contract to join Movistar for next season, which will keep her with the Spanish WorldTour team until at least the end of 2022. The former national road race champion currently rides for Equipe Paule Ka, and has already tasted victory this season by winning the opening stage of the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana in February.
Norsgaard went on to take third place at the Omloop van het Hageland behind Lorena Wiebes (Parkhotel Vallkenburg) and Marta Bastianelli (Alé BTC Ljubljana) at the start of March, before the coronavirus pandemic stopped competition. She missed much of the 2019 season due to a knee injury, and has yet to restart her 2020 season with her Swiss team.
"I'm super thrilled to join the Movistar Team family," Norsgaard said on her new team's website. "I'm confident that I'll fit right in, and that we as a team will achieve great things together."
Norsgaard's older brother, 23-year-old Mathias Norsgaard, already rides for the men's Movistar squad, having joined for 2020.
"I'm excited to see myself develop into a top squad like the Movistar Team," continued Norsgaard. "It really gives me confidence that we're so close together with the men's team. It's modern, and the fact that I'm in a unique situation to share the same team as my own brother is also pretty cool.
"I believe the set-up of this team could be the future for women's cycling," she continued, "and I'm super proud to be part of a team that is progressive and which is part of helping define the future of women's cycling."
Team manager Sebastián Unzué added: "Emma is an exciting addition to our roster and will soon become a key part of this team. She's someone we’ve been following since we started this project three years ago, and will surely help us take another step forward.
"She's got the ability and talent to be able to take victories from big or small groups – something really uncommon in this sport – and has strong legs against the clock, which is a crucial skill in modern cycling.
"I'm excited to see how she can grow in the Classics and how she develops as an athlete in the upcoming years," he said. "Other than that, there's an exciting project ahead on a personal standpoint – and something which really moves us – which is having Emma and Mathias sharing teams."
According to Movistar, Emma and Mathias Norsgaard are the first opposite-sex siblings to ride for the same UCI WorldTour outfit.
