Career ends in 2023: Heinrich Haussler - the commuter between Germany and Australia
Sebastian Lindner
· 13.11.2023
Blonde strands were all the rage in the early and mid-2000s. Especially when they were gelled up into a hedgehog hairstyle. Heinrich Haussler also followed this trend. But under his helmet, there was usually not much to recognise after a race.
This was also the case on 12 October 2002. Haussler is 18 years old and at the start of the Junior World Championship race in Zolder. Born in Australia, Haussler had to leave his home country four years earlier to be able to compete for the German Cycling Federation in Belgium. The son of an Australian mother and a German father did so in order to have a better chance of achieving his goal of becoming a professional cyclist.
Heinrich Haussler: First big win for Gerolsteiner
The race remains in Haussler's memory. On the one hand, he crashes a few metres before the finish in the bunch sprint with a possible victory in sight, but quickly picks himself up again and is still the best German in 14th place. It shows that he not only has fast legs, but also a certain toughness - good prerequisites for a professional. But it was also one of the few things that stood in Haussler's way later on to fulfil another dream.
But first, another one comes true. After six months as a stagiaire at T-Mobile, Haussler signs a professional contract for 2005 with the second German team at the time, Gerolsteiner. In September, he celebrates his first victory - in his very first Grand Tour. In the sprint of a four-man breakaway group, Haussler wins the 19th stage of the Vuelta, making him the only German to be successful in a Grand Tour this year.
Haussler is 21 years old at the time and will be judged by this success from now on and seen as a beacon of hope, as German cycling does not have many reasons to look positively to the future these days. The big stars have aged or are sinking into the doping swamp, Tony Martin and Andre Greipel may have similar birth years, but like Gerald Ciolek, they only ignite later.
So Haussler has to serve as the potential sprint successor to Erik Zabel. But he actually prefers to be like Andreas Klier or Steffen Wesemann: a classics specialist. In 2005, Haussler first rode the Tour of Flanders and then Paris-Roubaix. A lack of experience and knowledge of the route as well as a crash prevented a better result than 25th place, but his love for the cobbles was rekindled, he later told Cycling Magazine.
2009 - the year of Heinrich Haussler
However, his relationship with the BDR cooled somewhat in the following years and his reputation also suffered. Although he won at least one race every year until 2008, none of them had the significance of a Grand Tour stage. He was not invited to join the national team. And when Gerolsteiner was dissolved at the end of 2008, Haussler did not find his preferred route to the last remaining German professional team, Milram. There was no interest in him there, so Haussler went to the Cervelo Test Team in Switzerland instead.
And that is a win-win situation for everyone involved. Because in 2009 Haussler rides the season of his life. He later said in Procycling magazine about this year: "For me personally, this was the turning point in my career. Before that, I celebrated the festivals as they fell. I was a real party animal. Cycle racing was a way to earn money, nothing more. But in 2009 I learnt what it means to be a racer. Through guys like Roger Hammond and Andreas Klier (Haussler's team-mates, d. Ed.) - the smartest racer in the peloton - alongside me, I've seen what you can achieve when you take your craft seriously."
Heinrich Haussler starts the season in Qatar, finishes on the podium several times and comes second in the overall standings. One stage later, he takes two stage wins in the Algarve. Then the classics season begins. He starts off with 8th place in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and 12th place in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. The detour to Paris-Nice results in another stage win.
A week later, the first monument of the year awaits. Haussler makes it to the Via Roma together with a large group via Poggio and Cipressa. There he is supposed to start the sprint for his captain Thor Hushovd. But he is too fast and tears a gap that his boss cannot follow. Only Mark Cavendish can do that. So Haussler has to pull through, but after analysing the photo finish, he is seven millimetres short of victory at Milan-Sanremo.
Heinrich Haussler's basket for the BDR - transfer to Australia
A month and a half later, it's not quite so close. Haussler also finishes second in the next Monument, this time in the Tour of Flanders. He wins the sprint of the large chasing group, from which the winner Stijn Devolder had previously broken away. As in the "Primavera", it became clear that even when Haussler had the best legs in the peloton, he did not win. Sometimes he rides too aggressively and squanders his strength, sometimes he doesn't use the help of his team-mates well enough to hide. Haussler still has to face this criticism later on, but he also accepts it and works on himself.
The next big victory came in July. Haussler wins the 13th stage of the Tour de France with a lead of more than four minutes. It goes through the Vosges, over the steep and unrhythmic Col du Platzerwasel. In the pouring rain, Haussler cheers in disbelief at the finish line in Colmar. Now the 25-year-old wants to really hit the ground running. However, it remains the greatest success of his career.
But before Haussler takes any more knocks in his career, he's going to hand out some first. After the super season, the BDR had expressed interest in travelling to the World Championships with Haussler as leader. But he declined. Not just for 2009, but forever. Instead, he wants to race for the hosts - his actual home country - at next year's World Championships in Australia. "I like Germany a lot, but the older I get, the more I feel like an Australian," he told several media outlets.
The BDR reacted piqued, publishing a quatrain on the German-Australian's change of nation. But he is more or less forced by the UCI to be Australian only. Although Haussler has never competed for Germany in the elite category, he has done so in the U23 and junior categories. So it was with a heavy heart that he gave up his German citizenship in July 2010.
Comeback attempt at IAM
Nevertheless, he does not play in the home World Cup. Long-term knee problems, which will continue to affect him later on, prevent him from making his first appearance in the Australian national jersey. The rest of the season did not go as hoped either. He starts the year well with a second place at the Omloop Het Niewsblad, but otherwise Haussler has to miss out on the spring classics almost completely.
Frustration spreads, Haussler drives drunk and rams into another vehicle. A victory at the Tour de Suisse follows later, but it doesn't save the season. In 2011, Cervelo merges with Garmin, Haussler stays on board. Preparation for the spring went well with two victories in Qatar and several podium places at Paris-Nice, but no results followed in the classics. Haussler at least wears the Australian jersey for the first time at the World Championships.
But things are not looking up in 2012 either. On the contrary. It is his first year as a professional that he finishes without a win. The new star in the cycling world, Peter Sagan, played a big part in this. At the Tour of California, he relegated Haussler to second place four days in a row. After the year, the now 28-year-old moved to Team IAM.
The new impetus helps Haussler to a slight upward trend. At Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix he missed the top 10 by a hair's breadth, at the Tour of Flanders he finished sixth, at Gent-Wevelgem fourth. On the final stage of the Tour of Bavaria, he becomes the winner again.
He succeeded a year later, but the victory in Bavaria in 2014 was his last on the international stage. He finished second again at the Tour, faster than Sagan and Greipel but not Alexander Kristoff. At the start of 2015, Haussler once again proved his qualities as a sprinter, beating the up-and-coming Caleb Ewan - and becoming Australian champion.
The heart: first road captain, then end of career
Heinrich Haussler switches to the new Bahrain-Merida team in 2017. While the winning rider Heinrich Haussler is still being relied on there, his body is initially throwing a spanner in the works. He only managed twelve race days. From then on, Haussler was valued more for his experience, and in the young team he mainly took on the role of road captain.
Apart from the not always benevolent nickname Barbie, nothing has remained of the blonde streaks in his hair. Haussler remains in the team for six full years - longer than in any other team and without a single victory. Now 38 years old, he is also tackling his seventh year, even though he already knows that he is no longer completely healthy.
In December 2022, he was diagnosed with changes to his heart during routine examinations. Further medical appointments confirmed that continuing his career would have meant an extreme risk. In addition, Haussler's team-mate Sonny Colbrelli Almost exactly a year earlier, he had fallen unconscious and collapsed at the finish of a race after suffering cardiac arrhythmia, which triggered a heart attack, whereupon he was implanted with a defibrillator. In 2021, Colbrelli had won Paris-Roubaix with Haussler's support. It was also the last Roubaix of Haussler's career.
The fact that he ended his career in 2023 exactly on the day before the cobbled classic, his favourite race, is no coincidence. The fact that his last race as a professional was the 2022 World Championships in Wollongong, Australia, thus fulfilling a dream that had seemed infinitely distant twelve years earlier, is fate.
Heinrich Haussler's greatest successes
- 1x stage winner Tour de France (2009)
- 1x stage winner Vuelta a Espana (2005)
- A total of 23 UCI victories, six of them at World Tour level
- 1x runner-up Milan-Sanremo (2009)
- 1x Second Tour of Flanders (2009)
- 3x Top 10 Paris-Roubaix (2009, 2016, 2021)
