Cancer survivor Torstein Træen leads Vuelta a España: 'I found that cycling, like life, can easily be taken away from you'

Stage six of the Vuelta a España has once again catapulted someone else into the lead. This time it's Bahrain-Victorious's Torstein Træen – and the Norwegian has quite the story.

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Cover photo: Tim de Waele/Getty Images Words: Chris Marshall-Bell

Catalonia, Spain’s north-eastern region of mountains, beaches, vibrant cities and world-class cycling, is forever butting in and demanding a major part in Torstein Træen’s story. It was here, on the sixth stage of the Vuelta a España 2025 that began in Olot, that a 30-year-old Træen, a late developer riding for Bahrain-Victorious, took the race lead after an adventurous breakaway move. It was also here, at the 2022 Volta a Catalunya, that the little-known Norwegian, then riding for Uno-X, scored his first GC top-10 in a WorldTour race. More significantly, at that very race, Træen had a doping test that turned his world upside down.

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Almost two months later, freakishly on Friday the 13th, he received a call from his team doctor. He had returned a positive test for hCG – human chorionic gonadotropin – a sex hormone that is triggered during pregnancy in females, but which is only present in low doses in men. It’s banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency because hMG products stimulate testosterone growth.

Træen hadn’t been doping, trying to cheat his way to the WorldTour after years in the third-tier ranks. He had testicular cancer. He was only 26. Six weeks after finding out, he had his left testicle removed as a precaution, and when inspected doctors found a 15mm cancerous tumour inside it. Fortunately the cancer hadn’t spread to the rest of his body, and equally as fortunate he had caught the early signs of the cancer when it was in its infancy. Testicular cancer has one of the highest survival rates, but, Træen believes, the doping control test definitely saved him from undergoing chemotherapy.

Remarkably, four months later he was back racing, and after an impressive 2023 he joined Bahrain. Last year he won a stage of the Tour de Suisse, and now he’s just taken the lead in the Vuelta a España. It’s only his third year racing Grand Tours. Second on stage six to Pal in Andorra, 54 seconds behind stage winner Jay Vine of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Træen goes into the red jersey, with his fellow breakaway companion Bruno Armirail 31 seconds behind. Jonas Vingegaard, who was happy to give the maillot rojo away, is 2:33 back in fifth.

Second on stage six, is Træen's best ever result in a Grand Tour. Photo: Unipublic/Rafa Gómez/Sprint Cycling Agency

Træen isn’t expected to challenge for the Vuelta title, but he can certainly finish in the top-10, and possibly even higher. For the third year in a row, the sixth stage has upended the GC and parachuted an unexpected rider into the lead. 2023 was Sepp Kuss’s turn, 2024 was Ben O’Connor’s, and 2025 is Træen’s. We don’t need any reminders as to how Kuss’s and O’Connor’s stints in red went.

Whatever the 30-year-old goes onto do in the forthcoming two-and-a-half weeks, this, leading one of the biggest races in the world three years after he was diagnosed with cancer, is something he could never have imagined when sat in hospital. He understandably doesn’t like to dwell too much on that worrisome, difficult chapter, but it will always mark a before and after in his life. “It’s changed me, for sure,” he told Cycling Weekly in 2023. ”I feel grateful to be able to do what I love – because I found that cycling, like life, can easily be taken away from you.” Torstein Træen, cancer survivor, is leading the Vuelta a España.