After the glory came the fall. It was his best season: silver at the Olympic Games and silver at the World Championships. In 1996, all was almost right with the world for Thomas Frischknecht. However, like a bad omen, the doping agent EPO started to make its rounds at the Tour de France and also marred the sport of cycling. For three years he was to celebrate almost no more victories, three years in which every race day became a humiliation and winners poured infusions into themselves instead of champagne. But the avowed doping opponent persevered until a test procedure for blood doping and his artificial winners was finally found. Since then, "Frischi" has been back where he belongs, at the top of the mountain bike world's winners' podiums.
Hardly any other mountain biker in history has been more successful than Thomas Frischknecht. Yet Frischi always feels uncomfortable on the winner's pedestal. He doesn't want to be one of those revered bike icons à la Tomac or Fisher. He simply doesn't fit into the corset of the shielded full professional or the winner bathing in glory. Frischknecht is the ideal type of nice dad who enjoys a cosy Sunday coffee with his wife and children at his grandparents' house - when he's not battling for victory on the world's racetracks. His career has already lasted sixteen years and only his fame will survive him.
He was genetically predisposed - for Thomas Frischknecht, there was little choice but to maltreat the Swiss forests with rough cleats every day. His father, Peter Frischknecht, three-time world cross-country runner-up, passed the gift on to him. As a youngster from Feldbach, he became junior cross-country world champion in 1988. Just two years later, at the age of just 20, he won silver at the first official mountain bike world championships in Durango. Only the old warhorse Ned Overend kept the youngster in check. In the same year, Thomas moved to the USA to ride in the team under the legendary Tom Ritchey. Ritchey became the Swiss rider's foster father, and team manager and rider became close friends.
On the race track, he is a piste hog: the worse the surface, the greater the likelihood of the winning champagne splashing between Frischi's hands. In contrast, his private life seems almost staid, especially when he's snipping away at the vines in his vineyard. He considers his greatest triumph to be the Olympic silver medal in Atlanta 1996, when, shaken by cramps and on a hand-brazed frame by Tom Ritchey, only the flying Dutchman Bart Brentjens was able to prevent his triumph. In the same year, Frischi became world champion, but he had to wait four years for his victory until Jerome Chiotti, who was doped at the time, handed him the medal out of remorse.
But his most successful year was the starting signal for the low points of his career. The golden EPO years of 1997-2000 left Frischknecht with nothing but tin. No more victories, only fully pumped opponents who left him eating dust. He fought on, refused to be defeated and campaigned heavily against doping. Every person caught was a ray of hope and Thomas was not discouraged: "With the EPO detection procedure, my results also came back," he says. And he celebrated his "clean comeback" at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, when he almost won out of nowhere.
Sixteen years as a professional - many of his competitors ended their careers halfway through. Thomas Frischknecht's record of victories would be enough for two lifetimes: three mountain bike world championship titles, three overall World Cup victories and countless podium places in World Cup races make him the Methuselah of mountain biking. Frischknecht has outlasted them all so far, the Tomacs, Tinkers and Djernisses of this world. But slowly, the friendly folk hero from next door feels drawn to a different life. A life with more time for his wife, his children and, of course, his vineyard.
