“My life as a cyclist began sometime between the mid- and late 1970s. My first Specialized Rockhopper from the early or mid-1980s is still being ridden by someone in the area. In the summer of ’86, I carried my bike up the Schlern in the Dolomites. Once and never again! In the early ’90s, mountain biking entered the German consciousness: Two South Tyroleans, one of them a professional alpine skier, rode on snow for “Wetten, dass..?” By that point, I had already been exploring the world on my bike for well over ten years—or more precisely, the Alps in South Tyrol, Central Switzerland, and Liguria. Plus my home turf in Hesse.” Christian would have every reason to call himself a bike rebel, not to mention a partisan on foreign soil: “I might have been one of the first to not only carry my bike around the Göschenen Reservoir—which was completely closed off because the Swiss military was still firing into the glacier below the Rhone Stock—but also to haul it all the way up to the Bergseehütte. I’ll spare you the comments from people along the way. And the announcement from the military helicopter’s loudspeaker was also unambiguous: ‘Get out of here!’ What I associate with those wild years is more of a struggle against the verbal and physical attacks from hikers, alpine farmers, dogs, and against the extreme restrictions in Austria. As a biker, I have boycotted that country ever since and to this day.”

“In the late ’90s, for a while, it was off-road riders on the Ligurian border ridge and motorcyclists at Tremalzo on Lake Garda who were out to get me as a mountain biker. That was my wild phase. But why do I keep going? Not for that reason—not to feel wild. It’s the experience that counts: the bike, the landscape, and me. Sometimes challenging, sometimes just beautiful, and always the satisfaction of having conquered a climb, a section, a line, a ride.”  “My experiences come to me in my dreams. They stay with me to this day, now that I’m 67, and motivate me to keep riding.” But time has not left Christian unscathed: “My professional life has been very demanding, both physically and mentally, and at 60 kilograms and 181 centimeters tall, it was always a balancing act when it came to physical exertion. Exercise-induced asthma did the rest. At some point, it became clear: My heart rate has to come down; less intense effort is called for. Just in time, a remedy was invented: the e-bike. With that, my world was back in order, and my heart rate only hit the red zone when I had to hoist the beast over tree trunks or haul it up steep steps. Summit tours with the bike on my back are naturally out of the question now. But I’m still out there—that’s the main thing.» «And as is often the case with medications: they can be addictive. That’s why I’ve fully embraced the evolution of the e-MTB.»  «I see the e-mountain bike as a form of the sport—not better, not worse, not unwarranted, not arrogant, and certainly not a “retiree’s bike.” When I’m pedaling hard with 20 to 30 percent assistance to climb somewhere, the young whippersnappers on their e-bikes zoom past me uphill like crazy. Who has a problem here? I suspect we’re all just having fun.” 

Christian isn’t just familiar with this killer argument against e-mountain bikes—he even agrees: “That’s true. But do all drivers belong on the road? How many skiers ride their skis? How many hikers in sneakers are on their way to 3,000-meter peaks? That’s just the way our world is, and we have to put up with it. We should move forward with reason, a sense of proportion, and a dose of personal responsibility. And ride our mountain bikes.” “I associate a great deal of my motivation for biking, for being out and about, and for the mountains with Ride. That’s why Thomas Giger’s polemic really blew me away.” Q He wrestled with himself for a week, Christian writes in his email. After the blog post with the counterargument was published, he decided not to cancel his subscription after all. He announces that he’ll be back in the Maderanertal this summer, but also wants to try out the new Furkatrail. Before that, he’ll be attending the Bike Festival in Riva on Lake Garda for the 30th time. That reminds him of another story: “It must have been ’97 or ’98. I’m pushing my bike through the trade show, past the Specialized booth. A guy speaks to me in English, asking if I know the new Groundcontrol tire and saying it’s perfect for my bike. He offered to mount it for me right then and there, which I gladly accepted. Later, someone from Specialized’s German sales team asked me if I knew that Mike Sinyard himself had just put the tire on my bike. Or ten years ago on Monte Baldo above Lake Garda, alone, fiddling with my Leica. An older gentleman says to me, “Hand me the camera and hop on the bike!” I had to ride the scene three times, then I got my camera back from Uli Stanciu [founder and editor of bike magazine]. The picture has been hanging in my living room in A1 format ever since.”  “50 years of mountain biking—for me, that’s 50 years of stories.”  Then he changes the subject again: “I have to get out—the sun is shining brightly, and I am a biker, after all. And a retiree. Isn’t life beautiful?” It’s clear that this is evident not only from these collected memories but also from the photos by bike pioneer Christian: Thomas Giger wasn’t referring to him in his text. Nevertheless, the text about the lost soul of bike sports hurt the fun-loving retiree. “But now my world is back in balance.”