Traeen is yet to win a Grand Tour stage - and it might not work out at this Tour de France either with a big yellow target painted on his back now, and with domestqiue duties for team leader Tobias Halland Johannessen down the road - but Tour de France yellow jersey may be just as good a success.
"It's hard for me to understand how important this result is," the new general classification leader declared immediately after the finish.
"You can see it in the faces of those around you, in the crowd, but for me at the moment it's still difficult to fully grasp. I'll have time to understand. The Tour is the most important race in the world, so I want to enjoy it."
Torstein Traeen in yellow jersey
It all started with...
Team manager
Thor Hushovd was spotted by cameras, anxiously awaiting the finale of today's stage. After all, this is Uno-X's first ever yellow jersey at a Grand Tour - and it came through a rider who was at project's launch back in 2017!
"I'm emotional, and I still am, because it was not what we were aiming for this morning, you know? It kind of happens, but it happens when we race like this, when we are not afraid of going into breakaways, and we are offensive," Hushovd told the media at the finish," Hushovd said.
"Everybody also knows a lot of the steps we take as a team, step by step... not huge, but steps year by year… I'm a very proud man today."
Today is not the end
What's more, Traeen's stay in yellow jersey doesn't need to be short-lived. The Norwegian rider was gifted almost eight minutes of
lead on the GC favourites, led by Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard at 7:53.
In theory, Traeen could hold the lead without major problems until the mountain stages 14 or 15 next weekend. Stage 6 featuring Col du Tourmalet will be a major obstacle, but the stage could turn out to be race quite passively among favourites...
"Now we have the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. So it also shows that we can come from a small country and create a team from scratch. And if you do it right, then you have patience, and you do a good job over years and time, you can create athletes and riders like this."