He discovered a tumor thanks to an anti-doping control. A year later Traeen is second in the Tour of the Alps

A year ago the Norwegian Torstein Traeen he had won the classification of climbers at the Tour of the Alps, but he was running with cancer and didn’t know it. After an early diagnosis and treatment thanks to an anti-doping test which had caught the first signs of the disease, he returned to the Italian-Austrian stage race with the One-X and he also came close to winning the Predazzo stage, the fourth out of the five of the short and explosive race which landed in Trentino. The 27-year-old made part of the day’s breakaway and was only beaten by the Austrian Gregor Muhlberger (Movistar) in a three-man sprint with the 19-year-old from the Marche region Giulio Pellizzari (Green Project-Bardiani CSF ) third and author of a good race, all on the attack. At the head of the general there is always Tao Geoghegan Hart.

The discovery of cancer thanks to an anti-doping test

Træen was diagnosed with testicular cancer a year ago when anti-doping inspectors contacted him after the tumor marker human chorionic gonadotropin was detected in his urine. The doctors then found a 15 mm tumor in one testicle, which was removed, without the need to recall the chemotherapy. In July Træen, originally from Honefoss, a town just north of Oslo, was able to announce that he is cancer-free. “I’ve had 99 problems and cancer is no longer one of them,” Træen joked in an Instagram post. “Seriously, it’s been a crazy few months when I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Luckily the operation went well and I can finally enjoy life on the bike again”. He returned to racing at the end of August 2022, in a stage race in Estonia, and then took good placings in Luxembourg, Croatia and Malaysia.

Now, however, the second place in Predazzo really smacks of rebirth, precisely in the race that had cut his career and his life in two: “Mühlberger was only faster in the end. I wasn’t able to detach it on the climbs, so there was nothing else to do,” he said. “I was hoping to do better in the general standings, but it’s been quite a difficult year,” he said, emphasizing what he had been through. The Uno -X has not yet collected stages at the Tour of the Alps but has stood out for her three Kulset brothers, all competing together.