NEWS

A former professional Ski Jumper from Switzerland, now living in Denmark with his family and studying for his PhD at Southern Denmark University.

Growing up in Einsiedeln (Switzerland) I came in touch with ski jumping at the age of seven. When I entered gymnasium at the age of thirteen I knew that ski jumping will be my sport and I started to train on a daily base. Already at the age of sixteen I was in top ten in the World Cup missing many school lessons, especially during the competition season. After I finished gymnasium, I decided to begin a sport study at the ETH Zurich which was an achievable study alongside high performance sport.

The course was not made for professional athletes, though. I always had to find individual solutions to move exams and take additional courses instead of the obligatory ones. When I was looking at the program from the study and the program for ski jumping, I had no idea how to combine them, but it worked out somehow due to good organization and self-discipline. During my study I participated at the Olympics in Salt Lake City reaching sixth place. I enjoyed having something next to my sport and I could use the theoretical background from the study for my training as well. Ski jumping is a very exciting sport, connected with a lot of travelling. I had to get used to learn in hotel rooms and on the long bus trip to the competitions. Every evening, a student-friend faxed me several pages of homework to my hotel as e-learning didn’t exist then.

When I finished my studies in 2005 with an equivalent masters degree, I finally had more time for regeneration and train full time. My performance increased the next season where I finished third in the Overall World Cup. But I still wanted to use my mind, so I continued to take some additional business studies and I was a representative in different athlete commission gathering valuable experience. My biggest sports success was becoming World Champion in 2009. In the same year I became a father and being away from home was not so easy anymore. I decided to participate at the Olympics in Vancouver 2010 and then having one additional year on the tour. After I ended my long sports career (sixteen years on the World Cup tour) in 2011, we moved to Denmark due to my wife`s job.

Here I wanted to have more time for my family and learn the language first. Thanks to my previous education, I soon found a job as a physical education teacher (my first “real” job at the age of 33!) on gymnasium level. After one year I decided to make contact to the sports department of the Southern University of Denmark to get in touch with elite sport again.

My research proposal was accepted and luckily I could organize the three year funding for my PhD project which I started in October 2013. The idea of my research is to investigate the career transition out of elite sport of former elite athletes. I am interested in the influence of the environment in this process, which consists of possibilities to combine education and elite sport, job possibilities for athletes and the general elite sport climate in the country.

The research will take place in Denmark, Poland and Switzerland with a special focus on career support programs for elite athletes. Let`s hope my research can add some more information and help to develop the situation of dual career athletes!