The Danish classics star wants to add to his impressive list of victories, which already includes the Ronde van Vlaanderen, E3 SaxoBank Classic, and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, as well as a stage at the Tour de France and four Danish time-trial titles.

Kasper loves the way that our team competes and can’t wait to lead his new teammates onto the cobbles at his favorite races.

“The main reason for me to come to this team is the way that the guys race,” Kasper says. “You can see that there's always a plan to try to win. Even if the race is not perfectly suited to them, the guys won't just sit in the bunch, waiting for the other teams to take charge. That really attracted me. On this team, we're going to do everything that we can to make races develop the way we want them to develop. That is really, really cool. For me, it’s the main thing: I like the team's approach to racing.”

EF Pro Cycling founder and CEO Jonathan Vaughters thinks that Kasper is going to fit right in with our squad.

“Kasper is a smart racer who can make big attacks stick at the ends of the toughest classics,” Vaughters says. “He can read a race very well. When the contenders are on their last legs, he’ll pick his moment to go. Time and time again, it’s the right one. He packs a great sprint too, as he showed when he won the Ronde van Vlaanderen.”

Races like Flanders and Roubaix are the ones that Kasper looks forward to most. When the peloton explodes, he comes into his own.

“When everybody's attacking and teams are struggling to keep control, that is when opportunities arise for me,” Kasper says. “That is when racing is the most exciting for me and where I see my chances. Those are the races I enjoy the most. The spring classics have a special place in my heart for sure. The main goal for the year is to lead the team to victories in the spring in Belgium. We're going to have a really, really strong team with several riders that can mix it up in the finales. That is a recipe that I believe in and one that has worked well for me.”

Kasper learned how to race when he was a kid in Denmark, where he started out riding for the local club in Kolding, the small university city where he now lives with his wife and which he will always call home. Before he took up cycling, he rode horses. From the age of four, he competed in dressage. He still draws on his childhood equestrian experience now as a pro bike racer.

“When you need to take care of an animal, you can't just leave it in the stable for two or three days at a time because you don't feel like going training,” Kasper says. “You are responsible for a living creature, so you need to go and exercise it every day at least. Maybe you don't want to do a full training session or a hard training session, but the horse still needs to be exercised. I think that gave me a lot of discipline very early on. When I started cycling, a lot of my friends in the bike club just went training with the group on Tuesday and Thursday. I would also go on the bike on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and do the races, because I was used to having to do my sport every day. That discipline of going out every day, which I had done since I was five or six or seven years old made my transition into cycling much easier.”

Bike racing was still tough for him at first. Kasper didn’t win a race for his first three years. He loved the sport nonetheless.

“One summer, I was watching the Tour de France on television, and I said to my parents, maybe we should give road cycling a try,” Kasper says. “I had stopped riding horses and tried lots of different sports, but none really caught on. My parents wanted my brothers and me to be active outside of school. So we called the local bike shop, which had a bike club. I still go to that bike shop, where I got my first road bike. From the beginning, I was like, this is something for me. A lot of the guys I raced against had already been riding for several years, and I made a lot of stupid decisions tactically in those first years, but everybody does when they start out racing. I had some catching up to do, but I made progress every year and that was enough for me.”

Kasper’s love of the sport is still what drives him. Being a pro comes with pressures and hard times, but Kasper still knows that it is a privilege to be a bike racer. Having fun is his superpower.

“It is a hard sport, but it's harder if you don't enjoy it,” Kasper says. “We all started cycling, because we enjoy it. That's something I really, really try to remember; you don't have to do this; you get to do this; you could do anything else if you want. I am lucky enough to live in a country where education is open to anyone. So, if I want to do something else, I have every opportunity in the world, but I get to do this right now. It is a sport and it is a lot of fun.”

Next year is going to be really fun with you in the team, Kasper. Welcome to EF Education-EasyPost!