MAEDER Gino

Type of rider
Climber (bahraincyclingteam.com, 01 Jan 2021)

General
BECOMING PROFESSIONAL
He decided that he wanted to become a professional cyclist soon after his parents told him they were getting a divorce. "I was 16 at the time. It was winter, and cold, so the mood was already a bit down, and then my dad shared that he wanted to get a divorce. I remember the moment my dad told us that he was moving out as if it happened yesterday. It was already dark outside, but I needed to go on my bike to release all the stress the news involved. So I got on the indoor rollers, I had to do some training. Riding on those rollers, I decided to become a professional bike rider. I was determined to bring them [his parents] back together. I was thinking that I wanted to become a professional cyclist to still have them both on the road, still with me, and to still be proud of who I am and who they raised. It's foolish, but I figured they still had to see each other at my races. Becoming a professional was always a dream, but then and there I made a concrete plan in order to reach my goal." (poddtoppen.se, 24 Apr 2020; theyoungpeloton.com, 16 Feb 2019)

RACING WITH BROKEN BONES
In 2017 he crashed into a car just over a month before the Tour de l'Avenir in France. "I crashed my bike into a car and broke some bones in my foot. That was five weeks ahead of the Tour de l'Avenir, when I was supposed to pick up my training. With five weeks of training with broken bones, I went to the Tour de l'Avenir, even though by the start the broken bones hadn't healed yet. The doctor let me train and go to the race because I was able to put my foot in my shoe. I had to cut the shoe to get into it, though. With the bad preparation, I was happy to finish 16th in the general classification." (theyoungpeloton.com, 16 Feb 2019)