Tobias Halland Johannessen 🇳🇴
Tobias is quietly having a great year, and that makes us excited, especially as bettors. Given the subtle nature of his rise, the bookmakers are still giving Johannessen value odds. There's going to be a breakout soon and we're amped to take advantage of it.
Johannessen finishes third, fifth, sixth and ninth during the Tour de France. Four times within the top ten on debut Tour de France is pretty nifty in our opinion. The podium finish was on stage six where while he couldn't quite climb with Pogačar and Vingegaard he still managed to distance the rest. His next closest competitor was forty seconds off his finishing time.
Other than the Tour he's almost always consistently within the top ten, be it on the general classification or in stages. From the Tour of Norway fifth, sixth and seventh, to a podium finish during the stacked Critérium du Dauphiné.
Johannessen's spring classics season wasn't half bad either. Twenty fourth at Liège - Bastogne - Liège and fifteenth at La Flèche.
Strengths
Johannessen on a good day, can climb with the best. On a bad day, he can still climb quite well. That's one of the aspects we like about Johannessen - his consistency. This consistency should translate into strong GC bids at smaller tours next year. We mean, Johannessen has already won GC at the Tour de l'Avenir in 2021 (and beating out the like of Carlos Rodrígues to boot) proving that he really can be a strong GC contender.
Johannessen has a half decent sprint too. Which he illustrated during that Critérium du Dauphiné podium finish that he garnered from a bunch and just lost out to second from the likes of Alaphilippe.
When to Bet
You're not throwing your money away on any stage that has a mountain top finish. The difference in gradients doesn't seem to affect him too much. He'll perform just as well on 6% as 10% and his descending capabilities after what we've seen on a few stage in the Tour (eg. Stage 17) are definitely up to snuff.
We're liking a win, or at least a podium at some of the smaller one weeks he does next year - especially if there is not a time trial involved. Ideally he'll be working on his time trial over the winter as it isn't great. To be really be able to compete with the big names he'll have to make that happen. We imagine Uno X's setup may be playing into this - as their budget is probably smaller than some of the World Tour level teams.
If he switches teams after 2024 (unlikely given his Norwegian heritage and the team's mandate for hiring only Scandinavian riders) that may also generate a breakthrough in performance.
We wouldn't be remiss if we told you that a top ten at some of the big one day classics next year was possible, especially if he managed to find the break. Nothing more than top ten though.
