Soren Waerenskjold refuses to race AlUla Tour 'because of human rights': "Gay rights, women's rights... there are many issues"

The 2025 road cycling season is up and running and this week, a lot of the peloton are in Saudi Arabia for the AlUla Tour. Among the teams competing are Uno-X Mobility, but one man absent from the Scandinavian team's lineup is Soren Waerenskjold, who refuses to make the trip to Saudi Arabia for 'moral and ethical' reasons.

Waerenskjold has competed in Saudi Arabia before, winning a stage of the race in both 2023 and 2024. This year though, the 24-year-old has taken the step to rule himself out of selection for Uno-X Mobility. "I said I didn't want to go back, and the team respected that," he explains in conversation with TV2, from a team camp in Mallorca. "If the team had said I had to leave, I wouldn't have had any say in it. They're the bosses. But for my own part, I'll try to stay on the "right" side, so to speak."

The crux of the reasoning behind Waerenskjold's attempt to distance himself from the AlUla Tour are, as mentioned, 'moral and ethical' reasons. "It's because of human rights," he explains. "There is evidence of people being captured and killed because of their political views. Gay rights, women's rights... there are many issues."

"If you have the opportunity, I think it's positive to take a little distance. But then you have ASO, which is a very large organizer, which has a lot of business over there, so it quickly becomes a bit complicated," Waerenskjold continues, although he is also self-aware enough to admit that he himself taking a stand is unlikely to make much difference to the situation. "I'm just a simple cyclist who can make a simple choice. Systematic changes are probably difficult to achieve. And I don't really think that my distancing myself from it has any effect."