You are now 46 years old. Isn't professional sport finally over now?
(Laughs) Apparently not. As long as I can ride at the front and have fun, I won't stop.
That sounded different in 2016, around the same stage of the season. You made it public that 2016 was your last cross-country season.
I wanted to finish my cross-country chapter at the Olympic Games in Rio, but it didn't happen. An injury prevented me from riding in top form. Inside, it felt like the last page of my sporting career had been torn out.
Can you please explain this in more detail? Every biker gets injured sometimes.
It started quite trivially during training for the World Cup in Mount Saint Anne. I fell on my knee and had a small wound, but it healed quickly. After the World Cup, the problems suddenly started. My knee became twice as thick. The seemingly harmless fall had brought dirt into the wound, which was trapped as it healed. As a result, my bursa became inflamed. I postponed my flight to Rio and had an operation in the USA. Inflamed tissue out, antibiotics in. Hardly anything worked in Rio. I did the race, but my knee seemed to explode. After the race, I went straight to hospital and went under the knife again. Back in Germany, I had my third operation. In the meantime, the skin on my knee was so damaged that the wound no longer closed properly. I had a hole the size of a fingernail and was looking at my kneecap. To cut a long story short: I lay on the sofa for ten weeks with my leg stretched out and couldn't do anything. My thigh melted by six centimetres. That's not how I wanted to remember the end of my career.
But don't you say to yourself, my body doesn't want any more, it needs a break?
No, my body wanted to, it was just that all the operations - five in total - had massively worsened the healing process. (Spitz lifts her knee and points to the bulging wound on her kneecap). Then came the hard road back.
And with success: World Championship silver medallist in the marathon, World Cup silver medallist, national league winner.
To some extent, I didn't expect that either. Things are going well so far and I'm focussing on the Cross-Country World Championships in Australia. I'm also only racing the World Cups that don't involve too long and stressful journeys.
Are there also financial reasons for this? Your team is only a two-person show.
Ralf (your husband Ralf Schäuble / editor's note) and I have been doing it this way for two years now. We travel in the camper and do our thing. Totally relaxed.
But isn't there a desire to be sponsored by a big team?
Well, the two-man act is due to the sponsors. I'm too old for the companies. Nobody gives me a two- or three-year contract anymore. It got to the point where I was called Grandma Spitz and people said: She can't do anything anymore.
So is 2017 a kind of satisfaction?
I'm not thinking about satisfaction, but rather about how much fun it is to ride at the front. I'm pleased that hard training pays off, because it gets more and more difficult with age. Not from the legs, but from the mind. The mindless interval racing has zero experience factor, but there's no other way in cross country.
Nevertheless, it won't go on like this forever. What is the plan after that?
A sports psychologist friend of mine always says: "When I think about stopping, I've already done it inside and don't need to roll up to the starting line. But of course, deep in the back of my mind I already have ideas about how I want to carry on.
Is there anything concrete?
I will stay in the bike industry - that much I can say.
No mention of the desire to have children?
I never had a strong desire to have children.
INFO SABINE SPITZ
Sabine Spitz is one of the most successful female mountain bikers ever. A detailed list would go beyond the scope of these pages, so here is just a brief excerpt: She won three medals at the Olympic Games (gold, silver, bronze). She also won bronze (4x), silver (9x) and gold (2x) at world championships. She also won 18 German championship titles, won two World Cups and stood on the podium twelve times at the European Championships.
Info www.sabine-spitz.com
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