Thor Hushovd will not pay Jonas Vingegaard’s salary out of Uno-X Mobility’s own budget. The Norwegian team’s general manager has told TV 2 that the only route to signing the two-time Tour de France winner would be for a Danish company to agree to help bankroll the deal.
Speaking on TV 2’s cycling podcast, Hushovd did not try to hide the appeal.
“When someone asks whether you’d like to get Jonas Vingegaard or Mads Pedersen on the team, that’s a dream,” he told the Norwegian broadcaster.
Then came the condition.
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“What I don’t want to do with bringing in Vingegaard is pay his salary. It’s pretty hefty,” Hushovd said.
He added that the only workable route would be a Danish company willing to tie its name to a Norwegian team, effectively co-sponsoring the project around Vingegaard.
A €5m salary on a €20m budget
Vingegaard is reported to earn around €5m a year at Visma | Lease a Bike, roughly a quarter of Uno-X Mobility’s estimated €20m annual budget, according to TV 2.
Hushovd made clear this is a conversation, not a transfer in motion. He described cycling as a small environment and said there had already been contacts around Vingegaard’s camp, as reported by cyclinguptodate.com.
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No immediate exit from Visma
The Dane is not a free agent any time soon. Visma | Lease a Bike announced in December 2023 that Vingegaard had extended his contract with the Dutch WorldTeam until the end of 2028, meaning any Uno-X move could not realistically happen before the 2029 season.
A Danish backer for the Norwegian team is not pure fantasy either. Uno-X Mobility raced as Team Faxe Kondi during this summer’s PostNord Danmark Rundt, swapping its red and yellow kit for the Danish soft drink brand’s green, confirmed by feltet.dk ahead of the race. For a full-season co-sponsorship of the scale Hushovd described, no Danish company has stepped forward.
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