Christoph Sauser

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

cape pioneer

October 26, 2009

26.october:

I am back at my second home here in Stellenbosch. Recovery time from from all the riding, plus even more from the after race party. The kings stage on Thursday was a night mare! Bobby and I had to ride 30kms all by ourself in strong head wind, over endless hills on a open gravel road. Finally we got caught at the last water point by 5 teams. What a relieve we don't have to ride alone any more. But right after that Bobby got a bad chain suck! We were 6.30h in the saddle. Man I was ready to get off my bike that day! I have no idea why, but Bobby got so competitive before the final stage. This was all fine for me, since I was hoping to carry more speed over the hills, and yes we were carrying it on that day. We won by over 12min! Thanks to the two leading teams who let us go :-)

21. october:

We are having lots of fun here at the Cape Pioneer Trek!

I have no idea how to call it, but maybe a riding holiday is the best form how to describe it. We ride through beautiful landscape, challenging trails and the best of all it is summer weather.

To do this with Bobby is such great fun. Compared to the other teams we do not have any tactics, or lets just say we ride stupid.

The first day Bobby cramped so hard in the last 40kms. I have never seen somebody cramping so hard at such slow speed! Well now he rides with two water bottles and sport drink as well. Luckily me, so now I can finish my own water bottle.

Yesterday we were going well until the last monster pass. But somehow one of us had a double flat tire left and right mid way up. Man we were going walking speed only...

But today on day three we were killing it!

We finished second in a real exciting road style finish. We played perfect tactics or lets say team Squirt did not think so, on the last 10 asphalt kilometers with strong head wind.

Stats for Christoph Sauser are coming soon.