Kristoffer Halvorsen: burst onto the scene with a bang, but left the peloton quietly through the back door

Hanging up the bike: at the end of each cycling season, it's time to see who we won't be seeing back in the peloton next year. This group invariably includes stars, valued domestiques and also riders for whom things probably didn't quite pan out as they had hoped. Kristoffer Halvorsen belongs to the latter category. In this article, IDLProCycling.com puts his career in the spotlight one last time.

Halvorsen was born on April 13, 1996, in the Norwegian city of Kristiansand, located in the south of the Scandinavian country. In 2013, he first caught the public's attention with a seventh-place finish in the Paris-Roubaix for juniors - won by Mads Pedersen - but it took a while before we heard from the former top talent again. The reason? A mysterious illness, which disrupted much of 2014 and 2015 for him.

Halvorsen overcomes mysterious virus and rebuilds himself with the U23s

The Norwegian team Joker did not lose faith in Halvorsen and included him in the team at the end of 2015, a decision that certainly paid off. In early 2016, the then 19-year-old sprinter impressed by finishing second in the pro race Nokere Koerse, ahead of the likes of Dylan Groenewegen. Later that year, he would go on to win a stage in the Tour de l'Avenir, two stages in Olympia's Tour and his first pro race, the Grand Prix d'Isbergues.

This also made him one of the top favorites for the U23 World Championship, which that season was held in Doha (Qatar). Thanks to the good preparatory work of, among others, Anders Skaarseth and Amund Grondahl Jansen, Halvorsen was able to compete for the win, which he secured by narrowly beating German Pascal Ackermann and Italian Jakub Mareckzo.

Following this victory, many pro teams were eager to sign the young Norwegian: top teams such as Sky and LottoNL-Jumbo - where Doha lead-out Amund Grondahl Jansen was already riding - were competing for Halvorsen's signature. However, he was adamant about spending another year in the U23 category. Riding for Joker, he won the Handzame Classic and another stage in the Tour de l'Avenir, before eventually deciding to join Sky in 2018, partly due to the presence of Norwegian team director Gabriel Rasch.

Sky tenure ends in disappointment for Halvorsen

In the British mega-team, he was immediately positioned as the lead sprinter for the Tour Down Under in Australia, but a crash resulting in a fractured hand in a criterium there led to an early end to that Down Under adventure. It was the beginning of a somewhat disappointing debut year at Sky, in which he did not achieve any victories.

In 2019, the Norwegian got a second chance in Australia, this time with more success. On the day his teammate Dylan van Baarle won the overall classification of the Herald Sun Tour, Halvorsen claimed victory in the final stage. That spring, he also achieved encouraging results in WorldTour races such as the UAE Tour, Classic Brugge-De Panne and the Tour of California, as well as a stage win in the Tour of Norway by beating Alexander Kristoff.

Despite this, the Sky framework did not fully suit Halvorsen, leading him to join Jonathan Vaughters' EF team for 2020 and 2021. There too, partly due to COVID-19 and motivational problems, he failed to make a significant impact, leading all parties to agree that it would be better for Halvorsen to move to the Norwegian Uno-X team after one year.

With renewed motivation, he aimed to make an impact with that team, but the former top talent was never able to fully confirm his status among the pros. There was a brief resurgence in the 2021 Tour of Slovakia, where he obtained a stage victory over the likes of Kaden Groves and Peter Sagan, but that was largely it. Looking at Halvorsen's results for, say, 2022, one mainly sees 'DNF' (Did Not Finish) behind his name.

This season, Halvorsen focused on the Belgian spring races one last time, but after competing in (but not finishing) Paris-Roubaix, we did not see him return to the peloton. Halvorsen himself had realized that the world of cycling would not bring him what he had hoped for and decided to resume his studies, quietly marking the end of the career of the 2016 U23 World Champion.