Christoph Sauser

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S-Works Epic

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

Marathon Worlds...

August 24, 2009

104km, 3'700 altitude gain, 4.40hrs racing time

3rd place, 4.40h racing time, 4.39min behind winner Roel Paulissen

Start time at 10.30, and that meant pushing the pedals for 4.30 hrs full on. The whole race felt like a cross country race, or that is how it felt to me. The climbs never ending, and for most of the time you could only ride in the saddle because the ground was too washed out. It was very monotonous! Those were the sections I suffered the most. My legs felt like sausages who got grilled more and more with every meter I was climbing. But only a short downhill and I completely recovered and could go very fast into the next climb, but after 10 min into it the legs got so tight again.

After the second long downhill we caught the breakaway with Roel, Paez and Medvedev. Many thanks to Dario Cioni who worked very hard for me to chase back. We know each other from the early racing years when I was still a junior. He switched to the road though, and he finished the Giro d'Italia 4th a few years ago.

It was Roel and Medvedev who broke a away again, this time in the downhill. It was simply chaos there, because we caught the women's (they did start after us, but shorter course) and passing was very difficult.

From that on it was more and less every body racing for itself. I was in 3rd position 40km to go, but a never ending climb to the roof of the race hit me hard and I got passed by Lakata, Kurschat, Dietsch and Soukup. I really really tried so hard to hang on to them as long as possible.

In the second last feed I got a big bottle. Sprayed half of it on the ground. Weight is everything! Man I wished I would have more to drink towards the end of the roof. On top I more and less squeeze a red bull bottle into me at the neutral feed. I definitely got wings on the technical downhills towards the end, but somehow my stomach could not handle it. On a short climb I got a monster cramp, and I had to jump off my bike. "What I am doing now...." walked a little and finally pushed the pedals slowly again. Luckily it got better and I was ready to chase more riders back. I don't know how much time I made up in the last 45min. but I passed 4 riders. Ok, Dietsch was really unlucky and had a flat tire.

After all that suffering I was happy with my 3rd place. I had a very bad diarrhea after crossing the finish line. The Red Bull gave me stomach wings from the inside out!

Stats for Christoph Sauser are coming soon.
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