Lars Ytting Bak (32), All-rounder Geir Berg (33), All-rounder Morten Kruse Brink (23), TT'ist Magnus Bäckstedt (37), Flat races Lasse Bøchman (29), Stage races Kjell Carlström (36), Hilly races Michael Færk Christensen (26), TT'ist Pelle Clapp (21), Talent Magnus Cort (19), Stage race talent Gunnar Grönlund (25), All-rounder Ole Haavardsholm (23), Hilly classics Jesper Hansen (22), Mountain talent Jeppe Lykke Hartvig Nielsen (21), Mountain talent Thor Hushovd (34), Cobble/sprinter Willy Ipsen (22), Stage race talent Kasper Jebjerg (27), Sprinter Christopher Juul-Jensen (23), Stage race talent Daniel Kreutzfeldt (25), Hilly races Philip Lindau (21), Classics talent Tobias Ludvigsson (21), TT-talent Jens Erik Madsen (31), Cobble classics Erik Meiniche McDermott (20), Cobble talent Håkan Nilsson (32), All-rounder Søren Nissen (28), TT'ist Havard Nybö (28), Classics Thomas Riber-Sellebjerg (25), Cobbles Thomas Nybo Riis (20), Stage race talent Rasmus Sterebo (21), Hilly classics Christofer Stevenson (30), TT'ist
With Thor Hushovd and Lars Bak on the team the focus of the season was naturally the cobbled classics and the chase of stage wins.
It’s also worth noticing the names of some of the newly signed talents on this team such as McDermott and Ipsen.
Thor proved early on to be motivated to prove his critics wrong by winning Le Samyn and Gent – Wevelgem.
That only put more fuel on Thor’s old dream of winning Paris – Roubaix as well as the teams belief in him being able to do it. Hushovd finished 2nd in Ronde van Vlaanderen behind Ballan proving that he is in excellent form and that Boonen perhaps peaked to soon as he dominated the early cobbles.
In P-R we had Jens Erik Madsen out in front for a long time forcing Boonen and Cancellara to use their helpers up early on. That gave Thor the opportunity to save a bit of energy and to the great surprise of everyone he managed to outsprint Boonen on the velodrome taking the most beautiful of classics.
With his even more surprising win in Paris – Nice earlier that year Thor pretty much secured our survival on the World Tour with that result!
With Thor being the only of our riders with Tour de France experience and nr. 1 on the WT-ranking he was the absolute captain in the Tour dreaming of another green jersey.
It soon showed that we wasn’t able to help Hushovd the way he needed in order to win bunch sprints at this point, so the only stage win he took was stage 13 out of a break.
He did show his amazing fighting spirit though and took points a lot of places where the other sprinters got nothing as well as points from a lot of top 10's. Sagan looked like he had it good in the bag going into the final week, but relentless attacking from Thor brought him in green on stage 18.
And once Thor has gotten his hands on something he doesn’t let it go easily.
That was the last big WT-result in a debut season bringing much bigger moments than we had expected and underlined our aggressive style of riding with 10 mountain jerseys including 5 on World Tour level.
Victories in 2013
One Day Races
Le Samyn - Thor Hushovd Gent - Wevelgem - Thor Hushovd Grand Prix Pino Cerami - Jens Erik Madsen Paris - Roubaix - Thor Hushovd Himmerland Rundt - Lars Ytting Bak Scandinavian Race in Uppsala - Rasmus Sterebo Rogaland GP - Magnus Cort Danish Championships - ITT - Lasse Bøchman Norwegian Championships - Havard Nybö Swedish Championships - Philip Lindau
Stage Races, GC
Paris - Nice - Thor Hushovd Bayern Rundfahrt - Christopher Juul-Jensen Tour of Britain - Thor Hushovd
With the team having proved strong enough to not just be an embarrassing sidenote in the World Tour several other Nordic riders having been forced into a career as the eternal luxury domestique joined the team for the 2014 season with names like Chris Anker Sørensen, Thomas Löfkvist and Jakob Fuglsang sticking out.
Hushovd started the season by completely destroying the opposition in Tour Down Under, but then the party stopped. We got some decent results and a few mountain jerseys, but with the major success of early 2013 we had to start wondering why the results disappeared for us.
Fuglsang managed to wipe that away in Romandie where he took the GC and points jersey. This is what captains are supposed to do. When things are the hardest they show the way and earn their pay!
The Giro d’Italia started on that vibe and with a lot of decent TT’ers and a great team spirit we managed to win the opening team time trial. The first of many to come as you all know by now. The days in pink boosted our belief in us self, which only got better when Lasse Bøchman took stage 8 as well.
In the end Fuglsang finished 12th while Juul-Jensen took the mountain jersey.
The Tour was raced with same captain, strategy and result. Another Green jersey for Thor.
One thing was a massive surprise to everyone though. Thanks to a very weak field of young riders Jesper Hansen ended up winning the white jersey!
In the Vuelta we had assigned leadership to Chris Anker Sørensen. That being said we had a guy in the break pretty much every day, which along with some great mountain stages from Chris and especially in the last week our youngster Willy Ipsen brought us the team competition. And on top of that Nicki Sørensen even took the mountain jersey 18 pts ahead of Antón. Chris finished 2nd after Purito crashed shortly before the finish line on stage 21 and lost several minutes. The last time RodrÃguez would really challenge for a GT podium.
Oh yeah and then Gustav Larsson got us our first rainbow jersey in the ITT!
Santos Tour Down Under - Thor Hushovd Tour de Romandie - Jakob Fuglsang Skoda-Tour de Luxembourg - Thomas Nybo Riis Post Danmark Rundt - Lasse Bøchman Tour of Britain - Jakob Fuglsang
Not such huge stand-out wins as last season's reign of Thor (albeit Tour de Romandie and WC ITT are pretty sweeet), but 2014 might have been all about consistency. To prove that the team is able to compete in many races, that many are capable of winning and they really succeeded at that.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
Shonak: True that. Hushovd started to get old and lacked that last bit in the finishes so it was time for some of the others to start scoring points and there was a lot of new guys on the team, who had to find their role.
Ian: And you'll only have to wait a moment to get it
For this season we lost our main sprinter of the last three seasons Kasper Jebjerg. To replace him we had brought in Matti Breschel and Edvald Boasson Hagen, which seemed like a fairly good deal. We also signed the first Icelandic cyclist ever.
The new starts were off to a good start with Edvald winning Santos Tour Down Under and Nokere – Koerse in the early season. Löfkvist finally found the level he was destined to reach and won Tirreno, but all that was a warm-up to our first really big goal of the season: Milano – Sanremo.
With both Edvald and Matti starting in great shape we had big dreams and got them fulfilled. Matti went on a late attack and just managed to stay ahead of the chasing peloton to take his first monument and proving that his time as a luxury domestique is over!
Things continued to go brilliantly as Hushovd won the first to WT-cobbled classics and McDermott stepping out of the role as a man for the future with a 5th place in Paris – Roubaix ahead of Breschel in his 3rd year as a pro.
The Ardennes are our least favourite part of the season, but in Flèche Wallonne Brian Steen Matzen gave us our first Ardennes-top 10 as a sign of his massive talent.
Fuglsang’s big goal for 2015 was the Giro, where he had made his debut finishing 12th in mediocre form with little support last year. A second place in Romandie proved that he was ready from the start this time around.
The Giro got off to a good start with several days in pink for Alex Rasmussen while a lot of GC riders lost time due to crashes and a team time trial (which we won). That allowed Fuglsang to take the pink jersey with a good margin thanks to some aggressive riding on stage 6.
He lost time to Antón on the uphills finishes, but made good use of his best skills gaining small bits of time on the flat. After stage 16 that put him 6 seconds down on Antón. With the Maglia Rosa changins shoulders four times in the last week it was amazing to see Jakob take back the pink on the final TT to win our first GT by only seven seconds!
The national championships gave us six wins out of six possible for the first time proving that we have all the best Nordic riders by now!
With Hushovd starting to get old we had to change our Tour-strategy slightly. We still went for Green to Norway only this time our Norwegian could still mix in the bunch sprints and with two stage wins on top of several other strong stage shows and great tactics on the important intermediates Norway got its third green in a row and Edvald his first.
We came to the Vuelta with shared leadership between last years 2nd place Chris Anker and Tirreno-winner Thomas Löfkvist. Both did very well, but in the end a 4-5 in the GC only makes for a side note in the history books. With a mountain jersey for Jesper Hansen, 5 stage wins and the team classification it was a brilliant Vuelta for us altogether.
That brought us a lot of confidence before the Worlds in Madrid. And that showed! Alex Rasmussen took the ITT and Matti found the perfect moment to attack putting him in rainbows as well and making us the first team ever to hold both rainbow jerseys.
And what other way is there to celebrate a world championship than winning a monument and then further on to a stage and the points jersey in Beijing. A season of five wins might not sound that impressive, but when it includes two monuments and a world championship no one blamed Matti for the low number!
We finished the season with a narrow win of the WT-rankings.
Santos Tour Down Under - Edvald Boasson Hagen Giro della Calabria - Jesper Hansen Tirreno - Adriatico - Thomas Löfkvist Giro d'Italia - Jakob Fuglsang Bayern Rundfahrt - Rasmus Quaade Jylland Rundt - Erik Meineche McDermott Tour of the Czech Republic - Willy Ipsen Eneco Tour - Lasse Bøchman
Santos Tour Down Under - Jens Erik Madsen Paris - Nice - Edvald Boasson Hagen Tirreno - Adriatico - Thomas Löfkvist Jylland Rundt - Erik Meineche McDermott Tour de Suisse - Edvald Boasson Hagen Tour de France - Edvald Boasson Hagen Tour of the Czech Republic - Willy Ipsen Eneco Tour - Edvald Boasson Hagen Tour of Beijing - Matti Breschel
Tour de San Luis - Jesper Hansen Giro della Calabria - Jesper Hansen Tour of Oman - Jeppe Lykke Hartvig Nielsen Tirreno - Adriatico - Jesper Hansen KBC Driedaagse de Panne – Koksijde - Erik Meineche McDermott Bayern Rundfahrt - Rasmus Quaade Jylland Rundt - Erik Meineche McDermott Tour de Suisse - Willy Ipsen Tour of the Czech Republic - Willy Ipsen Tour of Beijing - Brian Steen Matzen
Shonak: It did. We proved that great things can be achieved with a lot of depth to the squad and knowing how to take full advantage of the strengths of each individual rider.
5 Years of History 
Le Samyn - Thor Hushovd 
Paris - Roubaix - Thor Hushovd 
Bayern Rundfahrt - Christopher Juul-Jensen 
Tour of Britain - Thor Hushovd 
Vuelta a Mallorca, Stage 5 - Thor Hushovd 
Giro d'Italia, Stage 10 - Lars Ytting Bak 
Tour de Suisse, Stage 2 - Lars Ytting Bak 
Tour de Slovénie, Stage 1 - Daniel Kreutzfeldt 
Ster ZLM Tour, Stage 4 - Søren Nissen 
Santos Tour Down Under - Christofer Stevenson 
Österreich Rundfahrt - Christoffer Stevenson 
Tour of Oman - Jesper Hansen 
Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec - Lasse Bøchman 
Skoda-Tour de Luxembourg - Thomas Nybo Riis 
Tour of the Czech Republic - Willy Ipsen 
Tour de San Luis, Stage 2 - Jussi Veikkanen 
Tour de Langkawi, Stage 3 - Rasmus Sterebo 
Tour of Beijing, Stage 1 - Alex Rasmussen 
Amgen Tour of California - Jeppe Lykke Hartvig Nielsen 
