Jonas Abrahamsen ready to debut at Tour de France after weight gamble: "When you hover around 80 kilograms you have much more opportunities"

Jonas Abrahamsen, just like most of his teammates from Uno-X, will line up to his Grand Tour debut at Grande Départ in Bilbao at July 1. The 27-year old Norwegian describes that his career path was for from easy, as the rider gambled a lot with his weight to reach his current level.

"When you’re young all dream about being on the top of the Tour de France, you can’t weigh too much. I was very skinny when I started cycling, maybe around 60 kilos, and I think my body couldn’t build muscle very fast," Abrahamsen told Velo. "Maybe I have some fast muscle fibers, but when I was too skinny, I couldn’t use them. I was like pretty good as a junior, but afterward, I felt that I was a little bit too light and I had nothing to build on."

"It was difficult because I had just one-year contracts in the beginning. If you’re going up by 10 or 15 kilos in one year, you won’t have the same power or watts per kilo in the same year. You will have a hard year and then it’s better and better," he said. "When I first got a two-year contract, I was gambling to gain some weight. I got a lot of help from my team and I was going up going from 60 to around 80 kilos, so that was a big difference. Before I was happy when I got over 900 watts peak, now I have like 1,500."

"Every year, my body responds better and better to my weight, and I get more and more power. When you are skinny you have to be very good to be on the top, but when you hover around 80 kilograms and you have more peak, you can do a lot of things like helping other riders to get in position, or you can go for a sprint in a small group, and you can go for a breakaway you have much more opportunities. I think that’s very nice."