¿Cómo te conviertes en campeón del mundo?

Björn: Hi, this is the Afasteryou Podcast with Sebastian Schluricke and Björn Kafka. Your podcast for aerodynamics and endurance training. Okay, we're back. Sebastian Schluricke and Björn Kafka. You could barely wait.

Sebastian: Mostly Björn could barely wait. And that sentence is getting popular — we're back. We always come back from some kind of coma phase. And we're incredibly happy whenever we manage to record another podcast. And yeah, today it's time again. And the topic we get to present today is: how do you become a mountain bike world champion? Exactly.

Björn: But first, a bit about what we've been up to. Anyone who doesn't want to hear it, feel free to skip. Sebastian and I, of course we always work a lot. Of course. But we also took a lot of vacation. Anyone who works a lot has to take a lot of vacation. Sebastian drove around in Sweden. I drove around in Germany and Denmark. And we were a bit less online than usual.

Sebastian: Yeah, that was really good. To have a phase where you can truly relax with your family and discover new places. When you're out like that — the platform unfortunately always has a few bugs, so even on vacation there's always some bug fixing. But this time it worked out well. I hardly worked on the platform for two weeks. Only a couple of things I had to fix — not even a few. That was good.

Björn: Yeah, I couldn't switch off the races. But after the Worlds I was a bit fried and did a little less. Read a lot of books, like you do. Now we'll tell you a bit about Henrique Avancini, whom I coach. And how all of that came about. A few questions came in, because it happened a bit under the radar. Let's start. Sebastian prepared excellently.

Sebastian: Yeah, in fact, I did. Of course we'll also do another update soon, before we get to the world champion stuff. We'll be unlocking significantly more aspects on the platform. We're still working hard on Activity AI. A few bugs to fix. Not super critical, but we'll do it. We'll polish it up a bit more so you can track your performance even better. And at the end of this year the ultimate feature is coming. I can tease that, but I won't reveal what — it'll be awesome. And the other feature I've been working on for a long time, where Björn always has to support me, is our Aero AI. We're very close, and this isn't even the ultimate feature I just teased — we'll be able to analyze every bike ride of yours aerodynamically, for CdA value as well as rolling resistance coefficient and wind speeds. We've been working on it for a really long time. We even filed a patent for the complete process, because we're also developing an aero meter. For a long time now. We're taking our time. We want to release a really good product. So it'll still take a bit. It'll be really good. We'll do a separate podcast on that — what happens on the platform. And today with the main topic — how do you become world champion? Henrique Avancini became world champion. Super. And he's a Björn Kafka athlete — he switched to Björn. And it's actually a pretty interesting story how it all came about, because like Björn said, it happened under the radar. And now here's an interesting question — Henrique Avancini is Brazilian, if I'm not mistaken. How did he get in touch with you, Björn?

Björn: That was last winter. An acquaintance of mine, Peter Wauters. A wheel builder — Nine's Wave — I work with him occasionally, even trained him a bit. A good friend, who sponsors Henrique Avancini's team. He must have told Henrique about me, and Avancini also knew me a bit from the other riders. And because he has his new team now, his own team — he left Cannondale — he wanted to get in touch. The contact came about over the winter. I was initially just Performance Manager, because he still had his own coach. I gave some impulses, said I'd structure it this way, I'd ride these energy flows. And that's how it started. Until it came apart a bit at the beginning of the year — the team coach didn't want to keep working there. A big shock, including for Henrique, because they'd worked together for a very long time. Then he asked if I could take over. I said yeah, sure, we can do that. But from the start we said, we don't communicate anything publicly. We keep it completely relaxed, because — the guy has a huge Instagram following. We said okay, we keep it quiet. We want to... ...see how it develops and not build another wave on top of the ones already in his life. So we kept it really quiet, called once a week, I explained what we were doing, and it went step by step. We can go into detail now.

Sebastian: Yeah, do you want to — I find it interesting you said it was a fluid transition. You were Performance Manager at first, seeing his training sessions, maybe also diagnostics, so you could already gauge his general potential — because you also have many other very good cyclists, we shouldn't forget that. So you definitely have the experience to judge. And then comes that point where he maybe wanted more from you. The question is — from a coach's perspective, if you get a very good athlete, there's always a risk you might not be able to build on their performance. How did you feel about that? You had the chance as Performance Manager to spot his potential. Maybe at that point you were already convinced it could work with him — so you said okay, becoming his coach makes sense?

Björn: Yeah — potential. Henrique Avancini was a bit of a late starter. From 2017, 2018 it really took off. You have to mention that he had a bad 2020 season. That's why he decided for himself — he didn't want that pressure anymore. He founded his own team, wanted his own freedoms. The start of the season was okay, pretty good. But then several things piled on. He got sick, he had knee problems, and I started thinking — uh-oh, this won't be so fun, because the performance numbers dropped dramatically. The numbers I'd seen over the years, the abilities he had — sure, he's world class. He's been world champion, he's been World Cup winner, a complete rider. Excellent performance numbers. But with the new team, where a lot of structural work had to come from his side, with the knee injury that dragged on really, really long, plus the flu — also dragged on — I saw, oof. This'll be tough. And for an athlete who was already extremely successful, a bit older too — Henrique is 34 now — you just know: either it'll work now somehow, or you're just chasing the old successes. That puts a certain pressure on you when you work with someone who's been world champion. You can lose a lot — well, you can't really say that. But the first world title he had, I'll obviously never repeat. Taking on an athlete who already had a bad season, and then the new 2023 season also didn't start well with illness and mediocre results — is this going to work or not? I was a bit... Nervous isn't the word — but you start thinking conceptually a lot. Henrique is also a demanding athlete, he questions a lot. What did he do in the past? He works extremely professionally, and I have to think about how I handle that. Am I meeting the standard he expects? But it ended up working pretty well.

Sebastian: Let's try this. As Performance Manager, what do you look at? Which values do you examine? How do you determine his performance capacity? And above all, what did you do with that knowledge? How did you support the coach and him with Performance Management — with your view of the data — to help with training planning?

Björn: I was initially amazed that the training was very feel-based, let's say. There was never a really rigid plan. More like — how do you feel today? Then for the next two weeks we'll do this, and we'll try that. Which worked super well, because the athlete should know his body, and the Performance Manager or his old coach steered a bit. But I couldn't really see the structure, which isn't a negative. Then a few things caught my attention. First, of course, oxygen values — oxygen uptake over certain power outputs, everything between three and six minutes — that was all very high. The values behind that fluctuated, sometimes very high, sometimes lower. So lactate production, relatively wide range, which is great. Which also shows his versatility — he was high-class in both Marathon and Short Track. Then I noticed something around the Olympics — a little kink. The performance values were extremely good at the high-altitude training camp. I said those values are so good you'd basically be Olympic champion with them. So the question arose — was there a tipping point? Because the intervals ridden at altitude were so extreme and so extremely good that I said — this could backfire. And that's what happened. He didn't perform what he actually wanted. That pulled him down mentally, and then a whole cascade came. Bad Olympic Games, couldn't get back to his level, with the team... Maybe a complete change of scenery. In 2022 we rode that wave a bit, and then step by step he shed those old structures. The old team, founded a new team, and then from the coach side — though that came from the coach side. So basically in 2023 he did a full reset. As coach I saw the structure I'd like wasn't quite there. But it was working, so it was absolutely fine. Peaking at races sometimes worked great, sometimes not. So I took a magnifying glass and looked, okay, what does he actually do? What does he do specifically in a race week? And I de-fatted it, let's call it, because there was always a ton of stuff. Henrique is a feel athlete — he needs to have a really awesome training to feel like he's going to ride a really awesome race. I have to pull that tooth a bit. Saying, okay, that's not so important now. We just have to build stupidly first — I say we ride three weeks of base. Or hard sessions. That was already during the coaching phase.

Sebastian: Right, exactly. We jumped ahead a bit — we moved from the Performance Manager phase into the coaching phase.

Björn: Right. So what I pulled out there, in coaching — what had been done before. Very good training that had worked well. I had to dig in, because I don't speak Portuguese. I never will. You can handle it in English? Yeah, yeah, sure, but the TrainingPeaks stuff was in Portuguese. Everything was different. It was a real puzzle figuring out what was there. What was interesting, though, was that Henrique had already been doing a kind of block training — partly, by feel. Which I find nice. Because if you download some standard training plan, it's always shotgun-style. As long as it's nicely built — a little threshold here, a little VO2max there, then some intervals, all put together nicely. Looks nice. Like stacking Lego bricks. Is there meaning behind it? Question mark — you don't know. By feel, the first thing Henrique said was, I need a long time to adapt. Which simply means, I do a lot of a certain stimulus until I feel it settles in. Block training, very clear block training. So from the start we actually had a great shared language. Except I then divided the block training into different zones. I said — we do exactly the same, just — we do base, we do the zone, we do VO2max. Then base follows from that, and we combine it with specific strength training. That's how we started. Basically from the old training you could definitely see block training structure.

Sebastian: What I find really exciting in this context — sure, that focus. But also — this is what many athletes on our platform have also reported to us. They have training, they do the training, and for example with Activity AI they realized, my god, I'm not riding base at all, I'm riding GA2 the whole time. Because, for example, they ride over the hills a bit faster and down the hills a bit slower. And what you mentioned before — de-fatting. Really look at what actually happens in a training session. Is it implemented the way it was planned? And with you a level deeper — when you said, what does a pre-race week look like? What's actually happening in it? You have to look at these structures much more deeply to understand what's going on, and maybe something's in the way. That's really interesting, and specifically with him — since he was already doing this block training, and you use the block training principle, I think, with almost all your athletes. Yeah, I mix it a bit. Not exclusively, but a lot. Yeah. That's great when it comes together. It's exciting to see an athlete got so good even though he used these structures intuitively but not explicitly. Bringing a real structure in there is certainly one of the building blocks that led him to deliver these new performances. Because if you have systems you can control, you can tune the knobs. If everything is very intuitive, it's always hard to figure out which screw of that intuitive training didn't work. Did you have the feeling, when you saw the data, that he could do it — while you were Performance Manager?

Björn: Yeah, actually I did. I saw it and thought — there's work to do, definitely. At the start I thought, okay, this could get pretty good. When the problems came — knee, flu and so on — three or four months went up in smoke. We sat down once. He was in Leogang at the World Cup, and we sat in his motorhome. We talked for about 90 minutes. It's of course not just about performance capabilities — fundamentally lots of mental aspects. That was a huge part. If you have an athlete who was world class and can't get back to that performance — how does he deal with it psychologically? I don't need to go into detail, but it's extremely hard when you can't call up your ability the way you want. The nice thing is numbers. Numbers are very honest, as long as the power meter isn't lying. You can say, okay, from the numbers we see a trend. What was there before will most likely come back, because you're not that old yet. We can give predictions — how long do we need to rebuild a certain performance capacity. We said, okay, full focus on Worlds. Nothing else. We have eight weeks, we do altitude training — so in his case into the altitude tent, and he responds well to it, we knew that. Then we simply said, full focus on that. Everything before or after doesn't matter now. Then he became Brazilian champion, very convincingly. We knew, okay, we're definitely on the right trend line. And we looked at a growth curve and calculated — how much performance increase was possible in those weeks? And we gained a solid 6 percent, and that was enough. That shows you how narrow it is — five or six percent better and you go from a mid-table result in cross-country to world champion. With values you — it's nuts, if you've already been that good. But it shows how close it is. I mean, 50th place in cross-country from a performance standpoint, especially if someone starts at the back — the people are still super strong. This sport is ultimately unfair — you start at the back, you have to catch up, that's energetically a totally different performance than someone riding at the front. The trails are narrow and everyone bunches up. We said, okay, Henrique wants to ride all three disciplines — marathon, short track, cross-country. We knew that's a real plate. We said, okay, we focus entirely on the Marathon first, because it's completely controllable for us. The others aren't as controllable — starting position and similar. So we said, that gives us the necessary toolkit and maybe the necessary confidence to then ride well in short track and cross-country.

Sebastian: What I find really exciting is that you said you prepared specifically again and got an enormous performance jump in that time — which shows the importance of periodization in training. That's certainly interesting for athletes too — to understand how to structure such a final eight weeks. Maybe give an example. What's one of your priorities? ...if there were any — key sessions for an athlete like Henrique, who probably still had a higher lactate production rate that you brought down specifically. Name one key session. Something special from Henrique that differentiates from others.

Björn: Fundamentally, I want the athletes roughly where they are. Maybe lactate production still a bit too high. Then I'll ride a lot of Fatmax range. Really, really a lot.

Sebastian: What I do fundamentally — how many weeks are we before the race? Quickly remind me.

Björn: Six weeks before the race they basically overload base. In every base session there's a Fatmax block of 90 to 240 minutes. Really long. And they suffer through it. What I do — and this has really held up over the last three years in MTB marathon and other races — we have a time where the human body can't always perform. It doesn't work. We have to pick peaks. Are we good at the Europeans? Are we good at the Olympics? Now we're at the Worlds. I look at the profile. I try to get data from all important races as early as possible, which is sometimes hard for Worlds. Wasn't so easy this year. But I had the data in May, I think. Then my athletes got the data. I calculated the climb durations. How long do you ride uphill? You never really knew what the gravel or surface was like. Then I had someone in England who had already ridden the course. So I knew — this is how long the climbs are, this is how the race is structured. Then I started stupidly building specificity — intervals, climb power, possible race situations, accelerations, and so on. They trained intervals built on that. It worked great for Henrique. It worked great for Marc Stutzmann, who finished fourth. It worked great for Andi Seewald, who finished tenth despite his illness with Epstein-Barr virus. I was very, very happy. For the others it didn't go so well, but that's circumstances — I had three people with stomach flu. It's crazy, how does that happen? But that's become the established way the last few years — I always look at what the course is like, and — maybe more importantly — the possible race dynamics. How will this race be ridden? You have to feel your way into the race. Then you start. Where is lactate built up? Then right away — where do I hold lactate? That means I ride a high block up with 2 minutes at 500 watts. I know then — sweet spot continues. So they ride 400 watts. They have to ride that for 12 minutes. Then into the descent. Maybe another short sprint. That's how I build it. Lactate build-up, lactate hold, maybe lactate clearance in the Fatmax zone. So that specificity is trained. It's not really shuttling or anything — it's really mixing it all together, tailored to the course. Which gives the athletes a lot of confidence in the race, because they notice, oh wait, I know this, it felt like this in training, maybe even harder than in training.

Sebastian: Yeah, really exciting. And always good — on one side maybe bringing that lactate production rate down, and on the other side training very specifically to the race course and the possible race dynamics. Which is exactly why the athletes gain confidence. We know self-confidence, belief in oneself, is enormously important in a race like that. And there's always the crayfish study — if the crayfish believes he wins, he wins. That's the psychological component, very interesting. One more thing — you said, and I can imagine the listeners are interested — you de-fatted Avancini's pre-race weekend. Tell us — what do you do there? What did you notice? What's he doing too much of? Or what did you change? What specifically happened?

Björn: He was riding extremely much. His warm-ups were sometimes — at a race weekend he'd do three different warm-ups. We broke it down a bit. We said, okay, in the morning we ride one hour easy, then you relax, you eat, then you go on the bike and do a warm-up — and not, you ride in the morning, you stretch, you do strength, you do activation, you do breathing training. Then you do your warm-up, ten minutes riding, bathroom, fifteen minutes riding, intervals, bathroom again, ten more minutes riding — that brings so much unrest. What works? That kind of system can work if the whole structure is built around it. But when you have a new team or you come somewhere you don't know, it can happen that if — you know yourself — you have ten different things that all have to go exactly right. And if one thing doesn't work, you have the Perfect Storm and the whole system collapses. And the athlete gets uncertain. That's why we keep things as simple as possible. And to train that beforehand. Saying — we do it like this. With Andi Seewald I always did — the weekend of Worlds is just like the weekend before race XY. You ride the same way, you ride conservatively at the start, the warm-up is always the same, and you know your routine. It's purely about routine. One more word, then a step back. We talked about lactate and VLamax. I'm not looking at VLamax much anymore. Or — you can't say it like that. VLamax would most likely drop in the test, because it gets dismantled. The lactate is actively used. I mainly care about provoking high lactate utilization. Meaning — ride a lot of Fatmax. A whole lot. If someone already has a high VLamax, I pound hard in those zones and try to trigger high lactate build-up, then clear it in the Fatmax range. So if I see lactate production is high but the guy is punchy, and I might need that for the race, I make sure not to beat it down with big gears and sweet spot and GA2 until you drop, which can work great for some races. There I say, okay, we need punch. I mainly make sure we have high lactate utilization. Two questions answered.

Sebastian: Great. Back to Avancini. Did he have other special challenges? Different challenges? You mentioned the illness, the knee, a new team. How does it generally look? Someone who's in the spotlight like Henrique — does he also have other challenges? Lots of conversations with sponsors, for example, or advertising obligations? How does he organize that? What are his challenges? How does he differ from Andi Seewald — though I think Andi Seewald has changed too since he became world champion.

Björn: Avancini is a rock star in Brazil. He had his own TV show. If you look at the pictures from the races, he's just a superstar. Huge Instagram following. Wherever he goes, people come. You saw it at the Worlds presentation — he went to the bike manufacturer, he was wearing his jersey, and it was a meet and greet with Avancini. People went nuts. They're not going to start an Avancini religion, but they rush over, they want photos, they want to touch him, autographs and so on. And we're not talking about 10 or 100 people. We're talking about thousands who are there and celebrating him. It's totally crazy how this person has come into the spotlight. But everything you have also has you at some point. And of course that's extreme pressure when people put you on a pedestal. Those are conversations — we talked a lot about that. He doesn't want to be the hero. He doesn't want to be the savior. He doesn't want to be a role model. We had a conversation — you can put it this way — when he was really at his peak, making lots of money, had his TV show and so on, he felt emptiest. It doesn't give you anything. Filling your life with stuff hollows you out at some point. You just build things around you. And everything you have has you at some point. He wasn't living his life anymore — life was living him. That was extremely unsatisfying, especially when performance stopped coming. Those are things you have to address. Right at the start we talked about it — I said, I know you have completely different obligations. You're fully in the spotlight. We have to work with that. It's a high psychological burden, especially in a country where people expect things from you. And especially when you have this role — not just being a super athlete and super good at what you do, but also being something else entirely. People project things onto you that you aren't — namely the superhero who does everything right. He has a shit day like anyone else. And I don't think anyone wants to fill that role, so we talked a lot about it.

Sebastian: And how was it during his training? Did he have many obligations, or could he focus more on his work?

Björn: No, that went well. Henrique developed training regimes over many years for how to integrate good training. Right now you could say he's on his farewell tour — we'll come back to that. He's currently in Brazil, but not home with his family. He's locked himself into a cabin, a very simple cabin, for ten days. I wouldn't call it primitive. But it's like Iten in Kenya. He lives in a small hut. He eats, he sleeps, he trains. That's training camp. But there's no one else around. He's alone — alone with himself, his thoughts, his body, his training, and he does nothing else. He takes these days and says, okay, training gets done. But we also have sponsor obligations, this and that. We always condensed them a bit, saying okay, this week's a recovery week, push it in here. Photo shoot, bike sponsor, whatever sponsor — he has many — video shoot XY. We packed that concentrated into one week where we knew it could work. But you have to be careful there too — these appointments can be exhausting. If you have a six, seven, eight-hour photo shoot, you're not fresh afterwards, and you have to watch the next week — how fresh are you physically, and especially how fresh mentally, when you've dealt with people and media reps for a week and you have to do happy-go-lucky the whole time. Grin all the time, always happy, everything super, and hey — Henrique, can we get another photo here? Plenty exhausting. You don't want that.

Sebastian: Yeah, was that something new for you as a coach? When you have such a successful athlete — I mean, what does successful mean? Andi Seewald is just as successful. Exactly. But someone who's been in the spotlight like that, where you maybe have to account for marketing measures more than with other athletes?

Björn: Not really. What was new is — and this is fundamentally due to Brazil or the country or his standing in the country. Nino Schurter can go shopping normally. And he's even more successful in cross-country. With Henrique it's a different level. He's famous. People know him. When he became world champion, I got messages on Instagram. I mean, I have so many new friends all of a sudden. You brought our national hero back up. We love you, you're forever in our soul. Stuff like that came in, and I thought, okay, hold on, he only — in quotes — became world champion. It has a whole different meaning. It gives people an incredible amount, because they project so much onto this person — someone who came from very poor circumstances. Worked his way up, real working class you'd say, and managed to come out of that misery to become a star like this. For many that's also a voice for people who have fewer privileges, much less money. It's a completely different scale. So yeah, it was new, definitely. But in Europe you don't really notice that. Maybe I'm too naive, and in this case that was maybe good, because you don't catch this scale here. For me — I sit in my 8-square-meter office that's terribly messy, and that's my world. Anything beyond that I only get virtually.

Sebastian: It definitely keeps the pressure low. If I called ten people every day asking how's performance, are we winning or not — if you repeat that often enough, the stress level rises. Not always positive, and especially in creative work doesn't necessarily help. Shall we switch back to training for a moment, to mix it up? How many Powertests did you do with him? And how did you use Activity AI for him?

Björn: Yeah. I think we did four Powertests. One at the start, to see where we were. Then we did one after. No, we did three Powertests. Then we let Activities run. Especially during the time he was sick. That was a bit... I was a bit like, oof, okay, the ship is sinking — he'd been sick, the knee was busted, the power didn't come, and I was unhappy seeing we were making no progress. Treading water. But the Activities then showed us a trend. At some point it went up again. And especially, he himself noticed, okay, this is getting better. Then there are key training sessions. You can also track that through the numbers with us — you could see it in the Activities. He has one climb he always rides in seven minutes. He's been riding it for 20 years. We had a training session — very specific — seven minutes up that thing, all-out, as fast as possible. And then we had this training, three times up the climb. Then he wrote me — he rode this climb under seven minutes, twice. He's done that only once in his life, one time. And the other time he rode seven minutes and a second or something, he said. He said the bike hasn't changed in a year. He's just in the shape of his life. He really has the shape he's never had. We knew, okay — I was now completely calm, knew, okay, it's two, three weeks to Worlds. Now we just have to keep the whole thing on the warmer. And those are the challenges, when you notice — okay, we're now, sorry. Could you also see on the Powertest AI that VO2 went up? Yeah, sure, it went way up.

Sebastian: That's sensational. When you can watch something like that live and trigger it, you get feedback on your training directly. This works. The really challenging thing is this hanging period with illness and knee injury. You don't really know what's happening. You don't know if your system is working for this athlete. You're in a vacuum for a long time. No one knows where you'll come out of the bubble. But I remember — you told me at some point — when we'd pop the bomb, that there's someone new with us. And then you'd say, yeah, we're not — yeah, and at the end, a bigger one dropped.

Björn: Yeah, I remember exactly when I told you and Dennis — that was in the spring, no, in winter. I told you we now have this super athlete. But, I said, something has to happen first. And then for a long time nothing happened. I knew — we keep it low until something happens. Or worst case we say, okay, Henrique, we tried, it didn't work. We both keep a low profile and then media attention stays low. A lot of it — especially for him, less for me. Sure, I also get lots of Instagram messages, but — I just stay a bit more actively out of it. For Afasteryou you shouldn't do that, I know. We should do much more marketing. But the video's coming.

Sebastian: It's coming. We've been working on it and we'll create a position and hire someone really professional for marketing. The numbers allow it. So we're looking forward to it. We're searching — maybe have already found someone — and we're excited that we'll be able to present all the aspects we have better from a marketing standpoint. We have someone else we're going to work with and flesh out how to use our system better. Especially for coaches. Those who use our system as coaches and where we have many advantages that maybe weren't transparent enough. We'll work on that. We'll create courses, learning courses, on how to use our system better. Ideas we never lack. It's always what matters, and what's underestimated sometimes is the execution. You can have lots of ideas, but it comes down to execution. We'll professionalize, take the next step, and keep going. We're excited — it'll be an exciting phase. I'm looking forward to it. Now of course we have our podcasts. We're always into the personality of Avancini, his surroundings — which is also really interesting — and having such a superhero in sports. Sometimes I think a similar character, at least in media presence — since I come more from the triathlon side — a Jan Frodeno might be comparable, who's certainly also a superstar in triathlon. Super well-known, super likable, appears everywhere. And I suspect Henrique Avancini is maybe even more of a role model for the people in Brazil, a bit more extreme than a Jan Frodeno. But — let's go a step further. We were at training. Now let's get to the race. You've already told us quite a bit about the race — de-fatting the week, how you can prepare specifically for the race. But my question to the coach — how specifically do you support during a Worlds? You also said you took a bit of vacation. To relax a bit from the high-intensity phase, where you had not just one athlete at Worlds but many athletes across different disciplines. Could you quickly tell us how many athletes you had starting at Worlds? Rough ballpark, no need to count exactly. And tell us which categories they started in.

Björn: Yeah — Marathon, everyone. On the road, TT — no, not TT. On the track, no one this year, though there are changes coming, we'll get to that. I was busy. Together with our partner WattShop, where I was also a bit present. Sure, we're totally involved. In all disciplines — even with WorldTour teams — we have our hands in the game with many WorldTour teams, at least our software, and of course lots of correspondence with WattShop, because they always have questions. So yeah, a lot, extremely much. For me that means — I think it was easily over 15 athletes, ballpark. Okay, that's a lot. You're phoning with all 15 athletes, not just once, but multiple times. Focus is of course on Marathon Cross-Country — exactly, on Marathon MTB. Over the last three years I've learned that it takes a toll on me, even with just one athlete. And it's a dice roll. So much can happen and so much can go wrong. That started with Andi, who won. 2021 when he became world champion — that's when I first felt this pressure. I knew he was in shape. I turned off my phone, and everyone was at the start line. Nino Schurter was there, who flew in by helicopter, who said — hey, I'm world champion — and took his whole team with him. Scott was all there, and they wanted to wreck shop. That didn't work out. They all blew up after three and a half hours. I remember I was very nervous, turned off my phone, turned it back on at some point, and all the messages came in — wow, everything super. Then at Worlds in Denmark — since it was right around the corner from me and from you and my mother, who lives at the border — I drove there and watched. Similar story. Being live is always great, but being live and involved — that's a whole different level. Especially when you're actually responsible for the athlete performing. I can't step away. I can only say, I gave my best — now let's see what happens. But you still watch the race and say, shit, we should have gone over tactics again. Ah, we should have practiced the sprint again. We should have — questions like that come. It went so far that at some point I got so stressed. I sat down somewhere, looked at the last lap — 2022 in Denmark — and I saw Andi wasn't optimally positioned, someone was up the road, and I said, okay, this is shit, I don't want to put myself through this anymore. I'd come back later once the media circus was over. I went into the supermarket. I bought myself a milkshake thing and some toffee. Ate them, looked at my watch, and saw — okay, the race is over. I'll turn on my phone. If lots of messages come, I know it went well. If lots of messages don't come, I know it didn't go well. I got a message in 2022 from Julian Biefang at Canyon — so sad about Andi and so on — and I thought, well, okay, he probably finished 10th or 12th or whatever. I called Julian and he said, yeah, I — I couldn't stand it anymore. Tell me how it was. Yeah, Andi only took second. That's amazing. On a course that really didn't suit him. And Martin Frey took fourth, and Simon Schneller 11th. This year — I knew again, okay, we trained great, the race was selective, I knew what needed to be done. Also a very honest race. I ran a similar strategy — turned off my phone. I went for a walk with my family along the Isar, the kids played around, and at some point my wife said, Björn, that race is on — don't you want to check? No, for god's sake. Then we walked to the research center in Garching, there was a nice planetarium, we walked around a bit, then she said, Björn, check now. I said, no, I don't want to check. And at some point she said, I'm checking now. She checked and said — you can look at this. And I saw — oh, Avancini world champion, Marc Stutzmann fourth, Andi Seewald tenth. And I thought, this is even better than last year. Can it be topped? I was totally relieved. But I noticed, the week after, especially on vacation, that I really felt — man, I need some distance. That was too much. That's always the one thing — is it good to invest so much? I'd say yes, because you engage with your stuff. That's proof for me that I engage extremely with it. That's maybe also why this outcome came — that I don't distance myself from it, and I lie awake at night thinking about what to do. Of course that always comes with a little crash afterwards. I drove around in the car, had a relaxed time, occupied myself with completely different topics. That was a metaphysical answer again.

Sebastian: Flowery. That's alright, it fits, it's good. I think it actually describes this whole process that many athletes can relate to. What you describe is the peaking toward a race — nerves rise when you realize you have potential and a chance. Then you get even more nervous. Because you're more wound up, maybe hoping for more, with higher expectations. And disappointment could be greater. And for many athletes too — after the main race, peak is over.

Björn: As a coach you're a bit — you're in the field, they ask a lot and they need certainty. I have to give them that, and I have it. But ultimately I'm not an AI that answers mechanically. And that's always funny. Yesterday I had a conversation with an athlete who wants to work with me. She was like, yeah Björn, you're always so scientific and about numbers and so on. I said — I'm actually not. People just believe that, but it's not true. That's a part of me, but why do we do all this number stuff? Mainly to generate certainty. Certainty that performance is right, that we have to work on a CdA value. Certainty that energy flows were right, that we know where we stand, and so on. It's ultimately a mathematical safety net that we — humans with feelings — build. That's also right and important. But we're not robots. Sebastian and I are not robots. Though — who knows?

Sebastian: Ultimately — that we maybe feel it now. But we were at race day, and we tried to lay out how your role, your day, how the whole Worlds played out for you — the tension associated with it, the challenges of maybe being on the phone with many athletes simultaneously, being the rock in the storm, giving certainty, radiating calm so the athletes stay calm. The horses are wild and want to be let go. You have to see that you don't gallop off too early. And every athlete can relate. The question is — to come back to Avancini — was there anything special for him on race day? Anything worth mentioning, maybe interesting for the athletes — how does he experience the race?

Björn: He was in flow from the start. We discussed tactics. We knew he had a worse starting position. We knew we had to get to the front. There was a bottleneck, we knew we had to get through. After that, stay cool, draft a bit. There were sections where you had to hide a bit. But after two and a half, three hours he was in focus and having fun, because this trail was incredibly great. That was a really — a heavily built course. The course builder — I don't know, unfortunately he died, he's a good friend of Hans Becking, who is an excellent marathon mountain biker, a really good one. So for many, course-wise, it was maybe the best Marathon Worlds there's ever been. That totally played into Avancini's hand — he really had fun. He was completely in focus and in flow and just had fun. My message in the morning, shortly before the start — you might send a WhatsApp — I didn't write, go get it, or anything like that. I just wrote, have fun and enjoy the race. Just — no pressure, sure the pressure's there, but above all have fun. And for someone who's a bit out of the discipline, it's easier to win, because he doesn't really have that much to lose. But he isn't really out of the discipline. He was already Marathon world champion. Don't forget that. So he did have the pressure, but he hadn't been in the marathon scene as often. So — he was completely in focus. He said he had as much fun as rarely before. And after three hours he knew, okay, I've got this. There's no one who passes me.

Sebastian: That's the self-confidence you need. And especially if someone wants to test it — once he's told himself that, he'll want to prove it.

Björn: And that's the difference. Many years ago — another lesson I had to learn as a coach — you have to really learn to win. The performance doesn't differ that much sometimes. It's just the certainty, the self-confidence, and the ability to suffer — that changes. Once you've won, you know how it works. Then you say, okay, you know what — someone's a little faster right now, I'll clamp on, and as long as I don't fall off the bike dead, it's all good. That's what separates people. Andi Seewald has of course gotten a bit better, but the Andi Seewald who finished sixth at Worlds would also have won Worlds if he'd had the mindset. That's sometimes helpful. The Worlds course for Andi in 2021 and especially 2022 didn't suit him at all. Especially 2022. But the mindset was right. Of course there was specific training. But the mindset matched. Once you've broken through — I know how winning works — then it goes.

Sebastian: A quick anecdote, because I found it so funny. I think you shared an Instagram reel with Hans Becking, because you mentioned him. And somehow the question came up — what's your task today? And the answer was: eating, first task today.

Björn: Don't forget it — they burn so much energy, and glycogen replenishment can really take a while, sometimes a few days. And in the background — you unfortunately can't see it — hangs a world champion jersey, a second is coming. Signed by Andi Seewald, it says. And eat, eat, eat. I think anyone who's worked with me knows I always say, eat, eat, eat. I think by 2023 everyone should have gotten it. Eat, eat, eat. That's the most important thing.

Sebastian: Okay, let's slowly wrap up this podcast. Let's turn to the future. Avancini said he'll retire. How did you find out? Tell us briefly.

Björn: Yeah, nobody knew. After the Marathon Worlds, sure, we talked a few times and said okay, pressure's off, that's already good, now we do what we want. And you saw at the awards ceremony how extremely emotional it was for him, with outbursts of feeling, which is how it should be. Two, three days later we talked, a very long conversation, and at some point he said he wanted to tell me something, something he hadn't discussed with anyone else yet, only with his father, and it should stay between the three of us for now — he's stopping. And that came out to what I said before — at the peak of his fame, not his performance, because he had that this year, at the peak of his career where he had the most media attention, his own TV show, making tons of money and so on — he felt emptiest. He doesn't want to do it anymore. He doesn't want to be the projection surface for everyone anymore. He wants to live his life. He's 35 now, he gave everything to get where he is. And what's nicer than saying, I'm stopping with a world title and enjoying life with my daughter, ...my wife, doing what I feel like. His team will continue to exist. And I said, Henrique, best exit you could wish for. You did everything right. I wasn't sad at all. I think it's great. Why not — sure, performance aside, all that was great, all that was genius. But making someone happy and letting them stop happy — best gift. It's of course extremely hard when you give up a big life purpose and don't yet quite know what to do now. No, it was good. I was really happy. Then it brewed — well, only very few knew, just three of us. At some point he made it official. That's how it is. Now he's on his farewell tour, rides a few more races, rides a World Cup in the US and Brazil Ride too — the stage race in Brazil — and then that's it. We now have — after Worlds everything was crazy, two weeks of partying. After all his media obligations, we're back in full training focus, and it's time to rack up the kilometers. Just base. Twenty-plus hours, and basically working the way we always did.

Sebastian: To close out the podcast, I have a surprise for you. No. We said, how do you become world champion? Right. Sum it up. How do you become world champion?

Björn: Yeah. Maybe genetics — I'd say genetics 20%. Work ethic 70%, and the rest is everything around it. It has to fit. You have to end up around the right people. You have to build the right surroundings. But above all it's work, work, work — and that's what you can't... It's never a straight path. It's not like, I start at number XY and then linear climb. Unfortunately not. It's a broken rational function. No. No, that's... The big difference between someone super successful and someone unsuccessful is that the successful one doesn't throw in the towel. I see it again and again. You have knee, you're sick, you have a cold, you have hip, you have back, you fall on your face, you blow a tire, chain snaps and so on. What do these people do? They don't say, now I have to do nothing for three weeks, I'll mentally recover, or six weeks or eight weeks. First phone call — Björn, what can we do? What's the alternative? What alternatives do I have to stay fit? They always have the goal in mind and always move toward it — it's just a zigzag course sometimes. In very few cases is it really linear. All, all, all of them have a wobbly path. All of them. Andi Seewald was exactly the same this year. Epstein-Barr and so on, now he wins Grand Raid again. Brilliant. And just saying, okay, this right now is shit, it's not working, it's running at a 45-degree angle toward our goal. Or we're standing still. Or in his case, going slightly backward. How do we get forward again? A lot of exchange and so on. The ability to deal with setbacks, mishaps, illnesses, and to come back forward — that's the difference between a good athlete and someone who becomes world champion. That's how it is. And keeping a cool head. Not the mentality — I'm a failure, so I'll work until muscle failure, that's my only path. Saying okay, I also have to have some positive life, that's not bad. Doing everything with force and hate and everything is my enemy — ...just muscling through doesn't make you happy, it's not sustainable. Always saying okay, I have a safety net, I have a family around me that supports me, and despite the sport — which takes up a huge part of life — still having something around me that's significantly more important. Family, friends and so on. Those are actually the ones who make it. All the athletes I have have exactly this net. Good friends, family, they can deal with setbacks well, and they're insanely hard workers. All of them.

Sebastian: Exciting thing — the net, you said. The net that catches you when you have problems. How about this — do you think athletes can also be very successful if they're the net for others? If they have to catch other people's problems a lot? Or does the athlete have to be at the center? Say you want to be a successful athlete and you have someone in the family you're caring for. You have other challenges to handle. Because sometimes it's reflected — if you want to be that successful, there's maybe a certain egoism to it, in a certain way.

Björn: Athletes have to be egoistic. Always. Successful athletes are egoistic only in phases, though. I also have athletes from totally broken families. Look — I find the example of Tour de France winners really interesting. If you look at Jan Ullrich — that wasn't exactly the top family situation. Father was never there, didn't exist. Parents divorced, never saw him. Lance Armstrong, same example. Tyler Hamilton, strong psychological issues. Bradley Wiggins, catastrophic family conditions, and so on. So there's a certain... ...certain ability to give themselves up for themselves. Very strong focus. But these people have a very high social aspect that's sometimes not obvious. They have, I don't know, a seriously ill father who dies. I'm thinking of an athlete right now. They take care of it. They're able to do that very, very well and give a lot. But in phases. And that's what distinguishes the athlete — when he says, I'm training five hours now, it doesn't matter if an atomic bomb explodes next to him, he trains five hours. That's the difference. But they don't carry it around with them. The athletes who ride — you know it yourself — running is a nice example too. Thoughts come, you process things during movement. Endurance sport is a kind of escape for many, and I think for many prominent athletes the start of endurance sport was nothing other than a form of escape — from problems waiting at home, not engaging with them actively, more on the bike and finding your own thoughts. So yes, egoistic — but only in phases.

Sebastian: I always find it important to know what prerequisites you need to become world champion. For some it's harder, and for those with a thick safety net maybe easier. It varies. Life isn't fair, and some have to deal with other things too. For me it's always been that when I do sport, I can think about many emotional aspects very rationally. That sometimes makes it easier to find solutions, if they are problems. But you can also be very creative and have totally different approaches to certain problems. But especially — when you do sport, you have a chance to view very emotional problems or trains of thought very rationally, which are then less emotional in that moment.

Björn: One more ability, just occurred to me — and this is maybe also true at many companies. The ability — we're talking about athletes who actually have a sport where only I win. It's not a soccer team, it's only me who wins. The ability to get others around you excited about it — not just monetarily, but excited for the cause — that I do this sport at a level where so much time goes into it that I don't have time for everyone. At a level where I might become world champion. To inspire people so much they pull with you, that they help you, that they believe in you. It's like — I wouldn't call them CEOs — but someone who works visionarily. That's sometimes missed at many companies that just throw money at things and say, we're all super and we have the mega product and we take care of everyone, when in reality maybe they don't. The ability to actively inspire. Athletes need that, and anyone who can do that will also always value having an excellent team around them. And they express that — not in some Instagram post, which can sometimes be nice, but really with honest joy, with honest love toward the people who helped them.

Sebastian: Okay, nice words to close with. We're looking forward to the next podcast, whenever it comes. Until then, have lots of fun with this podcast.

Björn: Thanks, see you. Ciao, ciao.