Nowadays, the junior world champion is the hottest property in town. Every team is fighting to secure their signature, to ensure that said rider turns pro with them. It wasn’t like that in 2017 though. “After dominating the junior season, I won the junior world championships in Bergen, Norway, and if it wasn’t for a puncture I probably would have won the time trial as well,” Julius Johansen remembers. “If you’re going to be a junior world champion today, for sure all the WorldTour teams would want to sign you, but that wasn’t the case back then – no teams wanted me.”

If it that seems remarkable – let alone unfair and unjustified – then what is even more perplexing (at least to the 2025 version of cycling) is that after waiting four years to finally get into the WorldTour, Johansen was left out in the cold yet again just two seasons later, fighting for recognition and visibility. “After being released by Intermarché [in 2023] I 100% thought my WorldTour career was over,” he says. 

But the tall and stocky Dane, now 25, has found his way back to cycling’s top table, incredibly landing a spot at the sport’s most successful team, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, via the most unlikely of routes: a stint riding as a third-tier Continental rider in Portugal. “I was both super lucky and unbelievably happy that all the hard work paid off. It just goes to show that you should always keep fighting.” This is the comeback story of Julius Johansen, now a teammate of Tadej Pogačar, only a year after nobody wanted to sign him.

This article was published on Rouleur in June 2025. You can read the full article here.