masterminding a legacy: scott sram x ODLO profile
Feature length brand storytelling profile originally published on odlo.com May 2022.
The service course for Scott-SRAM Racing Team is in a small suburb outside Zurich. There are businesses and houses side by side. Locals sit and enjoy a drink at midday. In many ways, it’s a snapshot of small-town Switzerland itself. Welcoming. Clean. Idyllic. A keen sense of community.
When we walk up to the building where it’s located – more commonly associated with manufacturing – we meet Yanick Gyger – Scott-SRAM’s mechanic for the last 10 years – better known as “Yanick the mechanic.” There’s a bike sticker on the window and some parts lying around, but the exterior is otherwise unremarkable. As Gyger shows us in however, the tell-tale signs of bike culture and collaboration are clear.
There’s the Rocket espresso machine, complete with the word “Glorious” (emphasis on the “Rio”) commemorating a gold medal from 2016. A metre to the right, a fridge doorhandle has been swapped out for an old Truvative crank with a screw through the bottom bracket thread. There are posters signed by Nino Schurter. A set of gravel bikes. A map of places where the team has raced. Front suspension systems lined up neatly in a row – each one new. Passes from old world cup races. Then there is Gyger’s wrenching area, with enough Park Tools to make any do-it-yourself mechanic drool.
There are rows stacked floor-to-ceiling of tubeless tires, wheelsets, sealants, bikes, shoes, helmets and parts bins from long time supplier and team sponsor, Scott. And at the centre of this race-winning hurricane, discretely tucked inside an industrial park, is a name known in any bike shop in the country. A true character who has spent his entire 30-year career on a bike, first as a pro, and now a team director.
“Racing is in my blood and has been my life. Now I get to have a career after the career looking after this team, still enjoying the race atmosphere without any of the suffering that goes along with competing.”
Within minutes of meeting him in this environment, one finds it hard to imagine he’d be comfortable doing anything else.
Speaking is Thomas Frischknecht – a former pro mountain biker and one of the sport’s true pioneers and personalities. He is medium height, in his early fifties and very fit – the signs of a guy who still rides several times a week despite his last pro race being some years ago.
He fiddles with the setup of a new cross-country full-suspension bike, just tuned by Gyger, as we prepare a temporary studio for the purposes of this interview. With lighthearted banter, they exchange a couple comments and jokes about running and running shoes. He’s never seen the need to clock kilometres by foot with riding bikes still such a prominent part of his day-to-day.
“Frischi” – as he’s more commonly known to riders and friends – is the gregarious, outspoken mastermind of a team that began as Swisspower Mountain Bike Team nearly two decades ago. And even a short summary of his palmarès as an athlete is impressive: 15 world championship medals, a silver medal at the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, two-time world cyclocross champion and XC world champion (also in 1996) – all at a time when racing mountain bikes lacked the following and visibility it has today.
When he helped co-found this team, it was with the objective of getting kids to love bikes and possibly spotting a rare talent who could compete at elite levels. What would eventually come out of this program – with names like Nino Schurter, Lars Forster, Andri Frischknecht and Kate Courtney all featuring prominently on the world stage – seems like a far cry from those early and very modest objectives.
The first partnership with ODLO and Frischknecht happened in 1994 with a base layer deal while he was racing. Old pictures in ODLO office meeting rooms show him riding a then state-of-the-art, aggressively set up, Ritchey Mountain bike with the propellor – ODLO’s logo – on his race kit. His eyes look downhill like lasers. You can see the tenacity that marked him as a professional. After striking up a friendship with the company’s then CEO, he helped convince ODLO to get into performance cycling apparel. ODLO would support Frischknecht’s team in 1997 – both as a clothing and cycling sponsor. In the early 2000’s, he had his own “Frischi” collection.
Ever since, the company and Frischknecht would stay connected, with ODLO as apparel sponsor and with Frischknecht specifically, liaising on product innovation and borrowing insights from riders to refine designs. Throughout, both used Switzerland – home to what are arguably the world’s best mountain bike trails and a reputation for precision – as a backdrop from which to create. The longstanding partnership and its outputs – quality, consistency, performance – would become mainstays on both sides for years to come.