Vuelta a España race leader Torstein Træen (Bahrain Victorious) has had a career filled with comebacks and responding to adversity, be that from his cancer diagnosis in 2022 – which was discovered thanks to a doping test – or his latest extended period off the bike due to a concussion in March of this year.
His resilience has been paramount on the road to wearing the red jersey at the ongoing Vuelta, best shown in how he rode the entirety of his first Grand Tour with a broken elbow, just a year after doctors discovered he had testicular cancer, and he was cleared to ride again after recovering from surgery.
Træen opened up about how mentally tough his various issues have been in recent years, speaking to the media on the race's first rest day, with the concussion driving him to extreme thoughts and leaving him contemplating what lay ahead in his future.
His mentality is remarkable to say the least, but even as resilient as someone like cancer survivor Træen is, the time alone and internal struggle of not knowing when or whether you will recover presented by a brain injury led the Norwegian to a dark place.
"When I found out it was cancer, it was obviously hard, but it was mentally hard – not like physically hard," Træen told Cyclingnews, as he fielded questions from the team hotel in Calahorra. "You can't really do anything, I learned about it, you just have to basically just go with the flow.
"When I broke my elbow [in January 2024], it was also five weeks of the bike, and I still had a bit of the same feeling like when I had cancer – you didn't really know when it was going to get good, but hopefully it will, and everything will be fine.
"I basically called him and said, 'I'm ready to jump off the balcony… but it's not high enough, so it won't make any difference'."
Træen's comments were serious, of course, though said with a deadpan tone on the severity of the subject, with several other riders talking of similarly serious struggles with concussion in recent seasons, such as Quinn Simmons and Taco van der Hoorn. Knowing that things had gone too far, Træen sought help in his home country and went to see specialists to find out exactly what was going on, which ended up in him finally getting back on track and racing at Eschborn-Frankfurt on May 5.
Leading the Vuelta into the second week
When what Træen has endured in just the past three years is laid out as simply as that, it's no surprise that he's been able to defend the maillot rojo after earning a stint in it on stage 6, having finished second out of the breakaway and overtaken Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike).
This is the first time in his career he's led any stage race, let alone a Grand Tour, and he's relishing the days he's had in red, knowing that Vingegaard will likely retake red in the coming days. He could lose it on Tuesday, with another uphill finale to El Ferial Larra Belagua, but isn't stressed by any means.
"I'm just looking a bit day by day, and then we just have to see, you know, like I was not expecting Jonas to go that early yesterday, for example," admitted Træen. "So if he does this tomorrow, also, I don't think 37 seconds is enough to keep up with him.
"It's the first time I'm leading a stage race, so it's pretty fun just running around and enjoying red. The pressure and attention are OK to be honest, because you know that you will not have it for 21 days, then you can enjoy it a bit more than maybe Jonas does, for example."
This Vuelta is far and away Træen's best Grand Tour performance of the four he's started, with his first at the Tour de France in 2023 becoming 21 days of struggle due to fracturing his elbow on the first stage, his second at the Giro d'Italia ending in a DNF after four days and his most recent, at last year's Vuelta, seeing a best stage placing of 34th across the three weeks.
He knew his form was strong, having bounced back after his concussion recovery, but this first week in Italy and Spain has all been a bonus. It's fair to say the Norwegian is just going to take it as it comes, though a top 10 on GC does certainly look doable now.
"Already after the Dauphiné, I was in pretty good shape, and then I went to altitude again and I realised my shape was coming along really well," he added. "So it's going where I knew it was going, which is, in general, pretty great now.
"I didn't really think about being in red after the first week of Vuelta. It was obviously not an easy season this year with the concussion and so, obviously, I put quite a lot of work into getting back fit again. Also, maybe I'm a bit mentally fresher still at this point in the season, because I didn't do much racing for the start."
That being said, and despite all of Træen's early success and great signs of top shape in the opening nine stages, he is still without a contract for the moment, confirming that it will be something for his agent to mostly figure out, while he concentrates on the Vuelta.
"To be honest, I'm not really focusing on the contract yet," said Træen. "I think my agent will handle everything. We haven't signed anything yet, but yeah, it will probably happen at one point, and until then, I'll just focus on riding my bike."
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