I rarely watch football. But the 2022 Champions League final was on the program, and the first 30 minutes or so were amazingly fascinating: almost surgically precise football. Every pass was on target, no fouls, no swallows - simply a feast for the eyes. That didn't correspond at all to my well-cultivated preconception. As the game progressed, what I associate with football became more frequent: players rolling around on the ground, even if they were only lightly touched.
Soccer players try to gain an advantage by swerving and rolling around, and it often works. For me, football is a good example of how the wrong incentives can make a system or a game less attractive. Precise, fair football is fun. I don't want to see players who let themselves fall down, that's unsporting.

Mountain biking is completely different. Here, the reward system goes in the other direction: swallows are definitely not rewarded here. The opposite is more or less the case. The riders in the Downhill World Cup, for example, repeatedly pull off terrifying crashes during their runs. But instead of rolling around, they shake off the fall, get back on their bikes, finish the descent and still occupy a respectable place in the rankings.

My children keep asking me why I love watching the World Cup broadcasts - with them - and hardly ever football. Because I'm more familiar with the mountain bike cosmos and it's much more exciting to see how the races and racing careers develop. From my perspective, mountain bike stars are better role models than footballers: to put it in general terms, they are much more grounded than world-class footballers. I can take the kids to the World Cup in Lenzerheide and sit with the top riders in the Gondeli, that's cool. Mountain biking is an unadulterated, nature-oriented sport. Many protagonists of the mountain bike scene are very good role models for me. World-class footballers rather less so. Nevertheless, I'm not averse to a little football match before dinner.