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…
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