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

Back home in Switzerland

April 9, 2012

Back home in Switzerland since almost one week. The post Cape-Epic days are always my record week of sleeping. Some afternoons my alarm woke me up after a hour. All I felt is like a tank rode over my body... so the best idea was just to join dreamlande again for more sleep. But when ever I ride my bike I feel a very good deep strength.

Cape-Epic was more then amazing again! It is one of the big highlights of the season. Already looking forward to next year! No wonder with such a good team around and all the success we had.

Five inside stories of our Cape-Epic:

1.) My daily 05.00 breakfast was porridge with Nutalla in it. Burry's rice with honey and Nutella

2.) After a few days into the race we naturally decide a Cape-Epic song which is played loud before we leave the camper. This year it was "Boom" (Snoop Dogg & T-Pain) last year "Born Free" (Kid Rock) and the year before "Imma Be" (Black Eyed Peas)

3.) The Mechanics Benno and Dylan worked until 02.00 in the night to get our bikes race ready again after the rainy stage.

4.) Our Specialized crew for four riders: 2 mechanics, 2 soigneurs, 1 cook, 1 chiropractor, 1 marketing, 3 camera men, plus lots of others good hands who helped out. Thanks so every body!

5.) Burry and my camper broke down in the middle of a tunnel after the prologue on the way to the first stage. The thing created lot of traffic jam until it got towed out. Luckily we were still at the prologue venue when that happened. We emptied the camper which was parked after the tunnel when we drove by later. We had to take a hotel for the first two nights. By the way it was the first time Burry and I nicely unpacked our bags and stored everything the way we wanted into the Camper still before the prologue... karma!

Stats for Christoph Sauser are coming soon.
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