Last week’s Tour of Qatar brought Edvald Boasson Hagen back into the spotlight, when he blasted the individual time trial and put himself into the gold jersey. The next day, a double puncture put paid to his dreams of overall glory but it got me thinking about doing the numbers on EBH …
0 = Number of wins EBH chalked up in 2014. Nothin’. Nada. Not even a Norwegian national champion’s jersey which, from 2006-2015, he’s won either road race or time trial (often both) in 8 of those years. (The only other year he missed out on a jersey was 2006.) (Pictured possibly ringing his agent in 2014: ‘Get me out of here! I want to win again!’)
Embed from Getty Images2 = EBH very nearly added a world champion’s jersey to his Norwegian clutch in 2012, coming second only to Philippe Gilbert (by 4sec) in Valkenburg.
Embed from Getty Images3 = Grand Tour individual stage wins. EBH has crossed the finish line first twice in 2011’s Tour de France (stage 17, pictured) and once in 2009’s Giro d’Italia.
Embed from Getty Images3 x 2 = Stage races in his palmares. He’s won the Eneco Tour, Tour of Britain (pictured celebrating his 2015 win) and Arctic Tour of Norway twice each.
Embed from Getty Images4 = Number of pro teams he’s raced with: Maxbo-Bianchi, Team High Road (pictured, when EBH was a pup), Team Sky and, currently, Team Dimension Data (formerly MTN-Qhubeka). His longest stint was with Sky at 4 years.
Embed from Getty Images7 = In his 8 years of Norwegian championship wins, 7 of those were for individual time trial. He won his jersey for road race twice – in 2012 and 2015. In 2015, he won them both. Will he get the double double this year again?
28 = Born in 1987, EBH is currently 28 years old.He was born in the Year of the Rabbit – Rabbit personalities are quiet, gentle, elegant, kind and patient. 1987 was the year that Stephen Roche did the double of the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France (doubles sure come up a lot in EBH’s story …) and took the rainbow jersey in Villach. Oh … and nobody puts Baby in a corner – Dirty Dancing was released in 1987.
Embed from Getty Images46 = Letters in his full name: Edvald Higgs Boson Boss Hogg Boasson Hagen Haagen Dazs. It doesn’t actually fit on a jersey.
145 = Number of people EBH follows on Twitter. Some of the accounts he’s following includes Barack Obama, LiveTattooing.com (!) and Batman-News. To be honest, EBH’s official Twitter account is hardly the most active – he’s no Jens Voigt when it comes to tweeting, that’s for sure. His last tweet was almost three years ago and, possibly because of that, he has only 6580 followers.
Header image: EBH and MTN-Qhubeka team presentation, 2015 Arctic Race of Norway (Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)