The Swiss Cycling Night had to be canceled due to the pandemic, but the Swiss Cycling Awards will still be presented. Never before has the level of Swiss cycling been as high as in recent months. In the Cyclist of the Year category, mountain bike world champion Nino Schurter, European time trial champion Stefan Küng and overall BMX World Cup winner Simon Marquart were among those up for election, but the award went to Mathias Flückiger. The 33-year-old mountain bike specialist won the silver medal at both the Olympic Games in Tokyo and the World Championships in Val di Sole; he came out on top in the overall World Cup for the first time.

The choice in the Female Cyclist of the Year category was even more difficult. Five Swiss female cyclists rode to the podium at the Olympics. Jolanda Neff was celebrated as the first Swiss female Olympic cycling champion; Neff, Sina Frei and Linda Indergand provided unique emotions with their historic "triple". Four years after her first cycling race, Marlen Reusser won silver in the time trial, while Nikita Ducarroz won the bronze medal at the premiere of BMX freestyle. There has never been a comparable result for a Swiss sports federation, at least not in the recent history of the Summer Olympics. Both the expert jury and the cycling fans, whose votes are weighted at 50 percent each, were spoiled for choice, with no clear winner emerging.

With this in mind, Swiss Cycling decided to present five awards to honor the exceptional, perhaps unique overall performance. "2021 was the year of women's cycling. The success of our female athletes shows that we are on the right track with our #fastandfemaleSUI support project and that we are committed to promoting women," says Managing Director Thomas Peter.

The young talent award goes to Joel Roth; the mountain bike specialist won gold at the European Championships and bronze at the World Championships in the U23 category. The cycling team of the year award went to the track foursome, which won the silver medal at the European Championships in Grenchen with Claudio Imhof/Valère Thiébaud/Simon Vitzthum/Alex Vogel.

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