TOUR When was the first time you rode a mountain pass by bike?
RUSSI As a ski racer, I did all kinds of training: runs, a lot of strength training to try and make my legs strong. Cycling was also part of it, but only as strength training, one kilometre sprints. There's a documentary film from the beginning of my career where you can see me riding up the Oberalp Pass on my racing bike in a tracksuit. But only up to the third bend. And I swear: I never made it up a pass during my career as a ski racer. The reason is simple: I hit the big mill and skied like a wild man. A downhill race lasts two minutes - maximum. That's why I thought: two times three makes six - and so after a few hairpin bends I was lying in the grass completely exhausted. I didn't make it - and I was suffering ... I tried again and again, but it didn't work.
And you never tried it as a child?
No, racing cycling wasn't as popular back then as it is today, it was only done by racing cyclists. I only started doing it after my career as a skier, around 1980.
But you still became a racing cyclist?
Yes, I became a cycling fan, but I'm a road cyclist, not a mountain biker, I can't do anything with biking. And I was already a cycling fan before I started cycling myself. When the Tour de Suisse came round - that was the highlight of the year, just like when the circus comes to the country. As a very young boy, I experienced Kübler and Koblet (Ferdy Kübler and Hugo Koblet were the shining lights of Swiss cycling in the 1940s and 1950s. To this day, they are the only Swiss riders to have won the Tour de France; Editor's note). When I started much later, I did make my own training plans, but build-up training is very difficult to realise in Andermatt. You can ride Andermatt-Realp and back ten times, which I did a lot, so it's not just uphill all the time.
Later, I used to go to Mallorca or Tuscany with friends for a week in spring. Usually with zero kilometres in my legs because we still had snow here. We may have cycled Andermatt-Realp ten times to get into the swing of things. Nevertheless, we always rode brutally on Mallorca. There was nothing under a hundred kilometres for us. We kept philosophising about intelligence and nonsense - but you can discuss that as long as you like ... Our goal was to have trained a thousand kilometres after a week.
And apart from Mallorca - which road cycling experiences will remain in your memory?
In Switzerland, there was the St. Gallen-Zurich, a military bike race. You had to take part in military gear with a rucksack and military bike. The bike only had a coaster brake at the back and only one gear. There were specialists who customised their bikes with the right gear for the profile of this race. My friends and I said: "No, we're not going to do it like that. We're going to the armoury in St. Gallen the evening before (an armoury is a building where military equipment was stored and repaired; Editor's note.), where the normal bikes for the soldiers are stored, and we each take one out and ride it." That was brutal. But I did various things that way with my friends, including a New York marathon.
In 1992, I was working for the Olympic Games in Lillehammer and heard about "Den Store Styrkeprøven", the Trondheim-Oslo cycling race. Then I asked around who was interested - and then we signed a contract with each other at two o'clock in the morning: "Yes, I'm in!" I then organised it. Two weeks earlier, we did a test run in the Zurich Oberland. We had to know how it would work with the length. Well, we said, let's do about half of it: 270 kilometres. Afterwards, we sat together at a barbecue in the evening and agreed: "It's theoretically and practically impossible for us to ride another 270 kilometres after 270 kilometres. How is that supposed to work?" We agreed on that. And then we drove anyway - and what can I say? It was possible after all, we did it.
You are also in demand and well-known as a planner of ski slopes. Are there similarities between a beautiful descent on snow and on tarmac?
There are mountain pass roads that are really nicely laid out, play nicely with the terrain, are not too steep and have nice curve radii. The latter in particular is very important for cyclists, so that the bends don't tighten but rather open up as you ride downhill. But who thought of this when building roads in the past? Certainly nobody. I think I've become a bit more sensible when cycling downhill, because I was already crazy downhill. A bit of a speed rush comes automatically. Then there's the sense of line that I have as a ski racer. You start to play with the line downhill and think: If I start the bend so far out and then aim for the apex, then it should work out at the end without braking.
And uphill: What are your favourite passes or laps?
My favourite route is Furka-Nufenen-Gotthard. I love the Tremola (historic, cobbled climb on the south side of the Gotthard; editor's note), it's so special. It has tradition, history and is very impressive because of the cobblestones. The way I ride it, it's the last pass of the tour. And despite the cobblestones, you're surprised that it somehow works. But when I think about it, my favourite pass is the Furka, although it's the hardest pass of those I can ride directly from Andermatt, including the Susten Pass. And it's really steep after the halfway point, behind Tiefenbach and especially from the Siedelenbach. But I still have the disease: I can't shift down to low gears at the start of the climb - and that's the stupidest thing you can do, because when you have to shift down, you have no more reserves and it's actually too late.
