Among the riders to watch next year, there is the Norwegian Sven Erik Bystrom. The latter won in September the U23 road race world championship title. This rider is quite versatile. Hired by Katusha for two seasons, he hopes to shine, but also learn as he told to Café Roubaix.

He talks about his debut in cycling, in Norway. "Once I’ve finished my junior time, I did my first U23 year with the local club in Stavanger, where I had some good results and won the Norwegian Cup overall. This lead to some offers from both Sparebanken Vest, as Øster Hus-Ridley was called, and Joker. I choose Sparebanken Vest, because it’s from the same town where I live and basically all the riders in the team are from my neighbourhood. We trained and raced a lot together, so this was a good thing for me."

According to the rider, his most important result is the U23 Eschborn-Frankfurt City Loop winning. But his world championship title change his life. He told too about the U23 race :

"I thought before the race that I could manage to get a medal, because my form was good and I liked the course. This year, in September, I felt that I was at my highest level and I knew I had a similar form to the one in May, so this is why I was confident I can get on the podium. When I attacked I went full gas, I gave everything I had and on the top of the climb I was really tired, so I decided not to pedal so much in order to save energy and stay as aerodinamic as I could on the descent. When I reached the last two kilometres I put everything I had, it was almost like a sprint for me, because I knew that if I had 10 seconds in the last 500 metres, the riders chasing will consider I am too far and start looking at each other."

"After I crossed the finish line I didn’t have time to realise what I’ve accomplished. Afterwards things settled in. People became more interested in me and I got more media requests. I don’t know if this world title will bring more pressure on the future, my focus is to develop myself every year."

And like many riders, he dreams to write his name in the history of a great classic: "Liège–Bastogne–Liège is one of them. I also want to win a stage in the Tour de France, which is a really big race in Norway. And I’d also like to win the Worlds as a pro. Is really motivating that the 2017 Worlds will take place in Bergen."

Within the Katusha Team, he will ride with Alexander Kristoff, a rider he knows well. "Basically, it was very important that we will be two riders from the same town, me and Alex (ed. Kristoff). We knew each other from the past, we’ve trained together when we were at home at the same time. It’s better for the both of us to be in the same team. He’s the big star of the team and I hope to help him and the other riders. As for me, I just want to become better, to handle the long races and to have more racing days compared to this year."