{"id":203951,"date":"2025-10-13T09:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T09:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=203951"},"modified":"2025-10-13T14:58:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T14:58:36","slug":"podcast-with-swiss-mtb-legend-thomas-frischknecht","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/10\/13\/podcast-with-swiss-mtb-legend-thomas-frischknecht\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiss MTB Legend Thomas Frischknecht: \u201cThis sport is beautiful because of  the people participating in it.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Welcome to another episode of the \u0160koda We Love Cycling podcast, where we celebrate the season of crisp morning rides, muddy trails, and off-asphalt riding in general. Matt Stephens\u2019 guest this time is a former Swiss mountain bike and cyclo-cross racer, Thomas Frischknecht, and you can look forward to 25 minutes of his illustrious career and outlook on the current and future state of mountain biking.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Due to his extraordinarily long and fruitful stint at the top level of the sport, Thomas is often called Europe&#8217;s \u201cElder Statesman\u201d of MTB. His professional career started in 1990, and already in 1996, he was on top of the Mountain Bike World Championship podium for the first time. He went on to collect 18 World Cup victories, three of them first place, a silver Olympic medal, two golds in the Cyclo-cross World Championships with 15 World Champs podium finishes in total, and much more.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/51QOwnTSO5XucrhzSLPsGq?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-testid=\"embed-iframe\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In 2002, Thomas started working as the Team Director of the SCOTT-SRAM MTB racing team (then SCOTT Swisspower Mountain Bike Team), a position he\u2019s scheduled to hold until at least 2028. One of his prot\u00e9g\u00e9s for 23 years was also the \u201cgolden\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/09\/23\/goat-says-goodbye-nino-schurter-closes-the-world-cup-chapter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nino Schurter,<\/a> who hung his pro career on a nail just days ago. At the time of the podcast, he spoke to Matt from a scenic spot overlooking Lake Zurich because his house was full of athletes \u2013 a top-class cycling coach\u2019s life is rarely dull.<\/p>\n<p>In the podcast, Thomas tied his racing career to the experience needed for MTB coaching, spoke about how it feels seeing riders coming through under one\u2019s guidance, took apart playing different roles in the sport he loves, noted the trend among young riders craving to diversify their cycling portfolio and not necessarily meaningfully pairing MTB with road cycling, remarked on why is \u201cmoney always a kind of cancer of any fun in a sport\u201d, and other topics.<\/p>\n<p>Brew a cuppa, sit back, and enjoy the listen!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to another episode of the \u0160koda We Love Cycling podcast, where we celebrate the season of crisp morning rides, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":203952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[328],"tags":[6399,397,8719,6508],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-203951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-outdoor-mountain","tag-matt-stephens","tag-mtb","tag-thomas-frischknecht","tag-wlc-podcast","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.3 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Podcast With Swiss MTB Legend Thomas Frischknecht<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Welcome to another episode of the \u0160koda We Love Cycling podcast, where we celebrate the season of crisp morning rides, muddy trails, and off-asphalt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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