Joining Development Team dsm-firmenich midway through the 2022 campaign, Axel made the step-up after a solid junior campaign which saw him take promising results in the classics and the Finnish junior road race title.
His dad used to race as an amateur so Axel found himself getting into the sport through him, initially enjoying the thrill and competition of racing. An active kid, he tried lots of different sports such as football, ice hockey and athletics to name a few, but saw he had some talent for cycling and slowly began to drop the other sports – eventually doing ice hockey in the winter and cycling in the summer. At the age of 16 he moved to Sweden to a sports school and from there he has only done cycling as his main sport.
“I’ve always liked cycling; it has a nice mix of being both an individual and team sport. You need to put the work in yourself in training but then you need to come together as a team for the races.”
Stereotypically Finnish, Axel presents himself as quiet and pragmatic, but he comes out of his shell and is more outgoing the longer he knows someone. With that nature, it is no surprise that he describes himself as “sociable”, “determined” and “chilled”, stating that he is able to get on with almost everyone and can form connections with lots of different people. As for the racing, once he has a goal then he will give his all for it, but he also has a switch that he can flip so that he “doesn’t think about cycling all the time” as it something he thinks can be detrimental as in the words of Eminem “you lose yourself”.
Axel’s first race with the team last year saw him take on Tour of Leuven, as part of a mixed squad with the Men’s program, something that he sees as a great opportunity and benefit of being part of the Development program.
“I did a few races with the older guys and it was a really nice experience. They all have a lot of knowledge for those type of races and I think I learned something new every classics-style race I did with them.”
Looking ahead to his future it is the classics where Axel sees himself as a rider, as someone who can handle the short punchy climbs and has a “bit of an engine”, and he jokingly admits that “the Alps are definitely not for me”.
Finished with his time studying for now, like all Finnish men Axel has mandatory military service that he has to complete. At the time of our catch-up with him he only had 15 days left to do, something he was quite happy about as “it’s not really for me and my personality”.
However, he does admit that he has learned a lot from it too and that some things such as discipline, timeliness and communication skills are all components from his service that he has taken with him into his life as a bike rider; and that he’s grown as a person because of it.
When he’s not on the bike training or racing, Axel enjoys spending time with his friends – doing some winter sports when to keep fit such as ice skating and skiing, or watching his beloved ice hockey.
