Adam Hansen is one of Lotto-Belisol's trusted riders for André Greipel’s winning sprint train. The only Australian in the Belgian team loves the European way of living. “Out of all the Australian pro cyclists, I am probably the least Australian. I love living in Europe and love the multicultural nature of our team.”

Hansen followed a remarkable career path. While his Lotto-Belisol teammates mostly followed the standard road through the junior and U23 ranks, Hansen, 32, didn’t start riding his bike seriously until his early twenties. “I have teammates who are younger than me and have been racing for sixteen years now. I am doing this eleven years now.”

“It makes me more fresh, I think,” he told Cyclingnews at the team presentation in Ghent. “I have at least ten more years in me. Starting later means that you can go on for longer. And the gap between the worst and the best in the peloton has gotten smaller over the years, too,” the Australian explained on why cycling careers tend to be longer now.

Hansen was born on the Gold Coast in Australia, and turned pro with T-Mobile in 2007 and stayed with the team under the HTC banner until it folded and he signed with Lotto-Belisol in 2011. Hansen has just signed a new contract for 2014 and 2015 with the Belgian team.

“I am very happy to stay with the team. Working for André [Greipel] is no bother. He has been so loyal and so nice to me. We all want André to win, we are a unit [as a sprint train] and if we don’t succeed we feel sorry for André. If we lose, we take it personally.”

Hansen is the only rider who finished three Grand Tours in 2012 and 2013. He aims to finish his tenth Grand Tour in a row in next year’s Vuelta, the place where he started this series in 2011.

“Riding Grand Tours relaxes the brain. You don’t have to think about where you are, what time the start is. And with the in-ear communication, the sports director tells me what to do in the race. In the sprint train Siebie [Marcel Sieberg] tells us what to do because he is so tall, he sees everything. I am the one who pilots the train to the front. For me riding is very relaxing. “

This year Hansen took his first victory since 2010 by winning the seventh stage in the Giro d’Italia after a long solo breakaway. His program for 2014 will be the same as 2013 with the Australian nationals and Tour Down Under as starting point and the three Grand Tours as building blocks around which the other races are planned.