Report Written by Bobby Behan, Team Manager

If I have to be honest my mind has been lost since yesterday afternoon. I am totally and utterly gutted for the team. Deflated is the best way to describe it, but I am still very proud of Lene, Liam and Christoph and reckon tomorrow we will already be thinking positively ahead!

Too many friends worldwide the Olympics represent the first opportunity every four years to get a glimpse of Christoph racing LIVE. Of course we entered this race very positively and I did text one friend to say that I had a good feeling days before, but in hindsight Christoph was lucky to be here, given his ripped open knee in a crash weeks only 3 ½ weeks ago, which then got infected. There was a three day period following that crash, where Christoph was told that he would not be in Beijing. “As tough as nails” is one way to describe Susi. He remained calm, got on with things and made the start-line – that is mark of his personality.

In the opening laps, I knew Christoph was not at his best. On his day Christoph would have not given in to Julien without a monster fight! Christoph is arguably, one of the greatest and most consistent mountain bikers ever, so it was disappointing for him to say goodbye to the Olympics without a medal. Christoph revealed to the media afterwards that he will not be in London 2012.

Christoph’s form was so good when he won that world title at the end of June, but since then he has been hampered by bad luck, firstly with that finish at Marathon Worlds and then his knee injury. When Christoph finished he told me that his good leg had been cramping badly, simply because he had been working so much with this leg over the “bad one”. I can understand his disappointment. He did win a bronze in Sydney 2000, which he is grateful for, but a broken chain in Athens and a subsequent DNF, meant that today he hoped would be his day - sadly not.

I am extremely proud of Christoph in so many ways. He was not in top form, but fought until the end and still managed fourth, which speaks volumes in my book. Well done to Julien, Jean-Christoph and Nino for putting on a great show and to Liam for the comeback move of the race, which showed great grit and determination.

The team now travel to Australia for World Cup Number 8 in Canberra.

Bobby.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 5:23 pm and is filed under categories: Chrisoph Sauser 2008 Season, Christoph Sauser, Olympics, bobby behan, specialized and tags: , Christoph Sauser, Olympic MTB, Olympics 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.