Thomas Frischknecht

Thomas Frischknecht at the Mountain Bike World Cup 1996

Thomas Frischknecht (born February 17, 1970 in Feldbach ) is a former Swiss cyclist who was mainly active in mountain biking . He has been practicing his sport professionally since 1990 and is considered one of the most successful mountain bikers of all time.

Career

Thomas Frischknecht started his career in cyclo-cross cycling . In this discipline he was junior world champion in 1988, amateur world champion in 1991 and elite runner-up in 1997. He also won the bronze medal twice at the World Championships (1990, 1992) and was able to win a World Cup race.

His greatest success was winning the silver medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in the Cross Country (XC) discipline . Frischknecht became mountain bike world champion in 1996 and vice world champion in 1990, 1991, 1992 and 2001. In 2002 and 2004 he won the bronze medal at the MTB XC Worlds . He won 17 world cup races and won the overall world cup three times (1992, 1993, 1995). He celebrated his last major success in 2005 when he won the gold medal at the mountain bike marathon world championships .

In road cycling , Frischknecht celebrated stage wins in the GP Tell and Giro del Ticino.

On September 14, 2008, Thomas Frischknecht ended his career at the age of 38 with the World Cup final in Schladming . He won a total of 18 World Cup races, a brand that so far only Julien Absalon and Nino Schurter have been able to beat

Today (2013) Frischknecht is team manager of the Scott-Swisspower mountain bike team together with Andi Seeli .

successes

Olympic games:

• Atlanta 1996 : silver in cross-country.
• Sydney 2000 : 6th place in cross-country.
• Athens 2004 : 7th place in cross-country.

UCI Mountain Bike and Trial World Championships :

• Durango 1990 : Silver in Cross Country
• Ciocco 1991 : Silver in Cross Country
• Bromont 1992 : silver in cross country
• Cairns 1996  : Gold in Cross Country
• Vail / Beaver Creek 2001 : Silver in Cross Country
• Kaprun / Zell am See 2002 : Bronze in Cross Country
• Les Gets 2004 : Bronze in Cross Country

UCI Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships :

• Lugano 2003 : gold medal
• Lillehammer 2005 : gold medal

World cup

• Mountain bike world cup winner: 1992, 1993, 1995
• 18 World Cup victories (17 Cross Country, 1 Cyclo Cross)

European Championships:

• Klosters 1993: Gold

Swiss Championships:

• 12 times Swiss champion

literature

• Urs Gerig, Thomas Frischknecht: Really mountain biking. BLV Buchverlag, 2008, ISBN 3835401017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Frischknecht - Team Director ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ Julien Absalon, Palmares
3. ↑ Scott-Swisspower MTB Racing on dtswiss.com ( Memento of the original dated November 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 10, 2013 

Web links

• Thomas Frischknecht in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Thomas Frischknecht in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Homepage of Thomas Frischknecht
• Thomas Frischknecht at the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame