Meet Torstein Træen, The Stoic Norwegian Survivor Who Briefly Lit Up The Tour de France

PAU, France — Some people are natural performers.

Torstein Træen is not, though his work on the bike might have been the last exciting general classification action before we get to Paris.

As the 30-year-old Norwegian rider ascended the podium in Foix after Stage 4 to be wrapped in the yellow jersey, he grinned sheepishly and his Uno-X teammates gathered below to cheer him on.

You wouldn't know he was bringing such a strange, interesting cycling career to an ecstatic new high.

Træen looked shy, rocking back and forth like a character in an RPG loading screen and forgetting to take the ceremonial stuffed lion of victory until the podium attendant nudged him on the arm.

At his official post-Tour press conference, at his other main interview, and at an interview after he crashed late in his first stage in the yellow jersey the next day (he's fine), the primary point Træen drove across was that he https://www.tiktok.com/@tntsportscycling/video/7659854665013644566">didn't really https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPfzcuRZoWM">know what was https://x.com/MaillotjauneLCL/status/2074901589475598566">going on.

When a Japanese journalist looking for a very simple quote asked him about his extended family on the archipelago, Træen simply said, "I'm not really in contact with my Japanese family." Two days later, he was https://www.instagram.com/reels/Dakf2ejtenj/">goofing around with the gendarmes and asking to hold one cop's gun.

He is steady, laconic, the sort of rider I imagine Karl Ove Knausgaard would like (I emailed Knausgaard's representatives just in case).

It didn't last, but it was beautiful.