I was sixteen years old and a middle-distance runner in the Bavarian squad. That's when my sister Regina bought herself a mountain bike to race on. We had this famous uphill race up to the Esterbergalm in Garmisch, where the whole town flocked to watch every time. At the time, I was going through a crisis of judgement as to whether running was the right sport for me. Just running round in circles all the time would eventually make you stupid, I thought. That's why I was quite open-minded when my sister's boyfriend persuaded me to go on a mountain bike tour. He said that if I made it all the way up to the Esterbergalm, I'd get a wheat beer. I rode Regina's bike. She gave me the tip of jumping off over the handlebars in case the front wheel got caught on a stone. I really enjoyed the tour, because I was already a real outdoorsman back then.
About a year later, in the summer of 1988, a round of the Grundig Cup, the predecessor of the later World Cup, was held in Garmisch. I was training to be a goldsmith. My teacher held the newspaper advert under my nose and said that you could win 2000 marks. I was about to get my driving licence and urgently needed money. "Gosh", I said to myself, "2000 marks would be great, you have to work long hours for that". So I took part. Wearing sprinter's trousers and a climbing helmet. My athletics coach had lent me the bike. Quite a few starters had entered. Apart from the sporting challenge, there was a very specific reason for this. The series was sponsored by Grundig and there were supposedly always great electrical items as prizes: Televisions, video recorders, cassette recorders, Walkmans. Of course that was a draw. On Saturday, I started in the dual slalom, where I had to drive round a few poles in a meadow. I won there straight away and got a radio.
Suddenly the sponsors were queuing up for Susi Dahlmeier
At the cross-country race on Sunday, there were a lot of female road cyclists at the start. They already had real bike helmets and looked really grim. I had a lot of respect for them. It was pouring with rain. I just went for it, rolled over on the last lap and came first despite somersaulting. I couldn't believe it. I wasn't a professional and had never raced before. I hadn't even trained. Suddenly the sponsors were queuing up. I got a carbon bike and invitations to training camps with the national team. In Freiburg, I was checked like an alien at a performance diagnostics centre. But I just didn't feel like training according to a plan. I wanted to ride up the mountain, see the landscape, have fun with Regina, not just scrub hundreds of kilometres on the road. Together with Regina, we then went on to do pretty well in the World Cup for a few years. Everything wasn't as specialised as it is today. We just rode when we felt like it. Nevertheless, we won one race after another. At the 1990 European Downhill Championships, for example, I just rode along, even though I thought I had zero chances. I rode according to the motto: victory or coffin. At the finish line, I could hardly believe that I had won. I had just briefly become European champion. Today, something like that would be unthinkable.
Transalp comeback after the baby break
The marathon developed in a similar way. After my maternity leave, I wanted to take part in the Grand Raid Cristalp in 1994 because everyone was raving about this new discipline. My husband still tried to talk me out of taking part. He was really worried that I would overdo it. I went for a little run with the baby jogger as I didn't have any time for proper preparation. Then I travelled to Switzerland. I won the race with virtually no training. It was similar a few years later at the adidas BIKE Transalp Challenge. After my second maternity leave, I went to the start together with my husband in 1999. I had to toil extremely hard, but we still won the mixed classification. Those days are gone once and for all. Unfortunately, because looking back, it was precisely this relaxed atmosphere that made the racing scene so appealing to me.
