Christoph Sauser

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Christoph is the current UCI Marathon World Champion, a former World Cup overall winner, and Olympic medalist. Following is the story of his sporting background, told from his point of view.

Christoph's personal website is www.sauserwind.com.

"I grew up in a sport oriented family so I had a lot of support and encouragement to participate in many different sports from a young age. Some of my favorite sports when I was young were: rollerhockey, skiing, football and wrestling.

As a child I rode my bike a lot, but only back and forth to school. For me the bike was for transport and not really for pleasure. But I always appreciated that my bicycle was for me an efficient and independent form of transport.

When I saw a mountain bike the first time I got very excited as I could see the big potential of riding off road and having fun on the technical downhills. Before bikes came out with the triple chainring, climbing the steep trails to get to the top of the very fast downhills would have been impossible.

Since I had a long history in competitive sport it was natural for me to wonder what it would be like to race mountain bike. In '91 I found some information on a big mountain bike race in Switzerland called the Grand raid Cristalp. It looked like it was going to be a fun event for my first mountain bike competition. That race is a beautiful ride in the alps with a lot of competitors and for me that was a great experience. So I was excited to race a few more races in '91 and '92.

One night in a bar a friend of mine challenged me to apply for a racing license, and he even offered me to find a team to ride for. I started the '93 season as a member of the Parkpre team. It had just started that year and was perfectly managed. I raced for the Parkpre team for the first five years of my career.

In 1998 a big dream came through and I signed my first contract with a international team, Diamondback. That year was also the first time I stepped on a world cup podium, I won the U23 Euro Champs, plus finished second at worlds in the same category. I was very happy with my position on the team, but unfortunately the sponsorship situation for the next season was a little bit cloudy.

Lucky for me I had an offer from the number one team in the world in the name of Volvo-Cannondale at the end of the season. This of course was something I was very excited about and I had four great years on this team until 2003.

At that time Volvo pulled out of mtb-racing, but with Siemens-Cannondale I found another great team for the following 3 years, which was controlled under a completely different management. Only the bike was more or less the same.

Now I am going into the 4th year with Specialized Factory Racing team. We are a bunch of great people with the focus of racing and professionalism, but having lots of good fun next to it. With Specialized as such an innovative company we have the very best brand in our hands for winning races and being well promoted. We are Specialized!"

Biggest achievements:

Cross Country:
World Champion Italy 2008
Olympic Bronze Medalist Sydney 2000
World Cup Champion Overall 2004+2005
14 World Cup Wins
Vice World Champion 2005 and 2006, 3rd. 2001
Vice Word Cup Overall Champion 2002, 2003, 2008
6 Times Swiss Champion
European Champion U23 1998
Vice World Champion U23 1998

Marathon:
World Champion 2007
European Champion 2007

Achievements

2011 UCI XC Marathon World Champion

Stats

Giro del Capo, RSA

March 6, 2009

Final Wrap Up:

It was so windy!

Before the start I have seen two riders blown off the road, and some Toi Toi plastic toilets flat on the ground! I now assume there was nobody in there while it went down?! I thought they will cancel the race, but since ours was together with the famous and world biggest cycling race „The Cape Argus“ the organizer must have been under pressure. I bet many of the 35‘000 participants would not have been happy at all to go home again, and not been able to ride around the beautiful cape peninsula even in this grueling wind. Sure we were first heat, but that meant start at 6.15 still in the darkness!

Towards the end I started to feel very good, and I was in top five coming over the last climb towards the city. But there is still 15km to go until the finish line and it regrouped a bunch of about 50 riders again, battling for the win. This race is like African world championships for the South Africans. A huge thing to win! Medscheme‘s Arron Brown surprisingly outsprinted Tour de France stage winner Robby Hunter on the last meters. I finished around 25th place right behind, so I got to see all the action.

Friday:

I changed my heat strategy for the today‘s 170km stage, which brought us over two big mountain passes. Since my body did not cool me down yesterday naturally, I was cooling myself down with ice water the whole time. I have no idea how many bottles I poured over my head, back and legs. It was even hotter then yesterday. The skin of my feeds got very soft due the water and sweating, and are now more sore then the legs.

At the moment when the real attacks are taking place, I just don‘t have it to keep up with the top shots over the long climbs, but definitely I felt better then yesterday.

I might finished around 40th place, 2min down. The stage won again team Barloworld by Stephen Cummings(GBr).

Tomorrow we have a rest day, and we will go and check out beautiful Camps Bay beach in town.

Thursday:

It was a oven today!

There even was a heat warning on the radio to stay inside and not getting exposed to the heat. And we had a circuit race in Bellville which is famous for it's hot temperatures.

On my srm computer the average temperature was 42°C and on the main climb it raised up to 50°C. Luckily my radio ear piece was not made out of metal, otherwise it would have burned my ear off. Lots of riders even cooled down the shoes, because the feet were burning. I was completely cooked on the last half lap, and not even tried to stay with the strong boys over the last climb. Anyway there was a successful breakaway right from the beginning on. They made almost 6min on us. I finally finished 37th.

By the way on the start I lost my srm computer, and it took me quiet a while until in found it. I was chasing for 15km behind our team car until I was back in the peloton again!

Wedenesday:

Back to racing!

It was a shock to my system. On Sunday I was still on my ski's and toady racing in 35°C in crazy cross winds. This wind spread out the whole field into pieces, and some riders got even blown off into the gravel shoulder.

I finishes about 60th in a third main bunch. The stage got won by Barloworld's Robert Hunter

Stats for Christoph Sauser are coming soon.
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