CHRIS JUUL-JENSEN
The Irish- born Dane on carving out a career as one of the peloton’s most valued domestiques
My dad took up cycling at a rather late age; I think he was mid-30s.
My older brother got into it and I naturally felt that if my brother can, so can I. We lived in the Wicklow Mountains, in Ireland, so it was normal for us to choose mountain biking. It was a bit of coincidence, but because of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease [in 2001] we were forced onto the roads. We were a bit reluctant - mountain bikes were cooler than road bikes, but I quickly realised I enjoyed riding the road.
My parents are Danish, so we spent every summer in Denmark.
The first time we did a road race in Denmark, we quickly realised the difference in the Danish cycling scene was quite impressive. Ireland has come a long way since I was a 12-year-old, and we now have many good pros, but there was still a lot of catching up to do.
I was way below the standard of the Danish cyclists; it was a bit of a shock. In mountain biking in Ireland we were winning; we thought we were the best underage riders. Then we went to Denmark and got a bit of a pummelling.
We moved to Denmark in 2005, when I was 16.
I’d just taken part in the Youth Olympics for the Irish team - it couldn’t get much bigger. I went for a year to a school, like a transition year school, where we were maybe 10 bike riders, U16s, and cycling was on the curriculum. I went from tying my uniform tie and polishing my shoes and coming home from school at 4pm in Ireland, to spending a year in Denmark with 12 other cyclists. All you did was a little bit of math and then you trained all day.
All ambitious underage riders who are bitten by the cycling bug dream of being a pro.
It probably only became realistic to me when I started riding as a U23. I spent my junior years as part of the Danish national squad so I had to declare nationality for Denmark - I knew then we weren’t moving back to Ireland.
I was part of a Continental team, Glud and Marstrand.
Magnus Cort was there, Michael Valgren, Jasper Hensen has ridden there. After my first couple of years as a U23 I’d been a guest of Bjarne Riis on a few of the Saxo Bank camps.
I had a feeling that this could go either way. I could make it as a pro, but again you can get desperately close and it just falls away.
The day before the start of the Tour of Denmark I went into one of the hotel lobbies beside the start to go to the bathroom and Bjarne came out before me.
He was like, ‘Let’s make an agreement, for the next two years. We’ll seal the deal and send it out in the next couple of days.’ It was a weird way of getting a contract. It had been something that meant so much to me. I couldn’t sleep before that, I was so nervous. I was like, ‘What if I don’t get a contract?’ And then I just meet Bjarne on the way to the bathroom and he was like, ‘We’ll sort it out, don’t worry, we’ll take you on the next two years.’ And then just walked off!
I’ve always known I wasn’t a born winner.
I had talent but I think I knew, if I had the chance to prove myself at pro level, just riding at the front, doing those hard, long miles for the team, that’s where I’d earn my brownie points. It’s why I was so desperate to turn pro - my engine wasn’t necessarily built for the amateur races.
I was always fascinated by those domestiques when I was looking up to the pros.
The type who would work hard. I saw it like this: if I needed to start there, I might as well start with what I am able to do, which was that kind of work. I knew if I kept being given those demanding, domestique roles I’d naturally get better. That’s more or less been the trajectory until today.
The Tour de Suisse stage I won in 2018 was enormously satisfying.
As much as I strive to be the best domestique, every time I go out on the bike I imagine winning a race. It’s every rider’s dream. I’ve just imagined a lot more in training than I have in the real world. For it to finally come together was such a relief, more than anything. I now know what it looks like, what it feels like, hands in the air across the finish line first. I can visualise it now, and it can happen again.