MICHAEL SCHÄR
The Swiss road captain on being a teenage prodigy and his dif icult star t in cycling
Getting into cycling was quite easy for me.
My dad Roland had a bike shop and when I was young I was in his shop all day, helping, working, and all the local riders came by. First, I started mountain biking and then I switched to the road. I really liked the speed – it was faster, more fun.
My dad is a former pro and a bit of a trainer for the locals.
He was a track rider for a long time. He was in the Olympics in the team pursuit but then it was onto the road. When he did the 100km team time trial in Munich in 1972, they put helium into their tyres to be lighter. He was a tech freak; still is now.
As a junior, I was hunted by the WorldTour teams.
Manolo Saiz gave me a three-year contract with Liberty Seguros when I was 18. The first year was U23 with Manolo’s development team and then it was two years professional. It was way too early. I would give every young rider the advice never to step from juniors to the pros.
Now, I can say, luckily, the Fuentes story came out in May.
[Saiz was arrested in May at the start of Operación Puerto.] It happened around the 2006 Giro and I wanted to have nothing to do with it. I went home and the team folded. Two months later, I did some under-23 races and I got the call from Phonak.
The first race I started, the Eneco Tour, Floyd Landis tested positive just before it.
I remember it like it was yesterday. My dream had come true: I was going to be a professional, and then they told me, ‘Yeah, but only until December 31st because the team will be finished again.’ They started calling me the black cat because every team I was going to was closing. I got the next contract from Astana, where the same thing happened: half a year and they had the problem with Vino [Alexandre Vinokourov] in the Tour de France, exchanging blood. After the third time, I started thinking, ‘F*ck, maybe I’m in the wrong sport.’
I was 19. It was the worst teams in the worst time.
I made two very good friends during this time, Martin Elmiger and Grégory Rast.
Rast I would consider my mentor over the years. He taught me pretty much everything I know about being a pro… but the hard way. He never gave me any compliments. Still now, it’s quite funny, our relationship is like an old couple.
We have the same body type, we realised we are not punchy enough to win races so we had to find our niche – and that was to be domestiques.
At the beginning, I thought I was going to be the next thing. I won all the races as a U23 and the newspapers hyped me. One paper wrote I was the ‘talent of the century’ and every single day we’d train, Rast would say, ‘Oh, the talent of the century is coming.’ At Astana, and the first few years in BMC, I still had ambition. The only reason to make a job out of being a domestique was survival. I would not have got another contract otherwise. Johan Bruyneel was a really hard team manager. At the end, when I left [Astana], he told me every rider is replaceable.
I prepare for races more than others.
It’s a Swiss thing. We are very precise, very prepared. Because of Garmins, now riders prepare even less, they trust their Garmins, but the really tricky corners, the really tricky bridges, when the forest ends and the wind really hits you from the side, this is not written on a Garmin. That is maybe my advantage.
This year I was feeling it, as BMC searched for a new sponsor.
Let’s be honest, if Greg [Van Avermaet], had gone to another team I would have gone to another team. But for me it’s great to stay here, I am really happy. Och [Jim Ochowicz] gave me a lot of trust over the last years, a lot of great races, and that’s something to give back. Like loyalty, you receive and give back.