DOMINIKGSPAN

best photos from 1995-2014

what would we do without pictures? i actually don't know and i really can't imagine it without them.
i'm lucky that my parents or someone else almost always had a camera with them, so that now
i can show you guys my favourite shots from the last years of racing.

a big thanks goes to my dad, who is a passionate photographer and to all the other photographers that took all the amazing pictures of my mountain bike career.

to check out the pictures, just click on one of the "year" buttons.
after that you can use the arrows on both sides to flip through all the pages.

• 2014
• 2013
• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005

• 2004
• 2003
• 2002
• 2001
• 2000
• 1999
• 1998
• 1997
• 1996
• 1995

my passion for film making

i remember back in the days when i was in school and our teacher would ask us kids what kind of job we imagined having as adults and my answer was: "i wanna work for television and produce films...!" after school i completed an apprenticeship as a "mediamatiker". for those guys out there who don't know what that is, it's something like a multimedia designer job. i did that for 5 years, and after that i worked in a promotion agency for three years before i started to race professionally.
over the past years i created a few season recap videos just for fun.

but i had always wanted to do a more professional video project, not just cutting all different kinds of video footage from different races together, which is what i had done for all my recap videos.
in autumn 2011, i went up to the swiss alps to zermatt and we filmed there for more than a week on a downhill track i had planned and built myself.

in winter 2011/2012 i finally realized my shortfilm project "RAD". after a short time i had over 70,000 views on it, which was crazy and had me stoked! so who knows what the future holds for me, maybe you'll find me somewhere in the film industry after my moutainbike career...

to check out all my videos, just click on the "click here" button below.

• click here

how it all began...

spring 1995 was the year of my first mountain bike race. my parents let me ride a local cross-country race. after that i raced xc for a few years. a bit later i got into the bmx and mtb trial sport. i raced a couple of years in all three disciplines, then the whole dual slalom thing came up and i started to do that as well. it was a pretty busy time back then, to manage to ride all those disciplines together. i remember that sometimes on the same weekend i went to a dual race on saturday and i did a xc race on sunday! at age 14 the swiss national coach selected me and since then i've been a member of the swiss national team. 2004 was the year of my first downhill world championship, and i finished 15th in the junior category. after that i needed to decide what i really wanted, because it was too much.

i started to focus on the speed discipline and quit the whole cross-country thing. from then on i always raced both dual (later 4-cross) and downhill at world cups and european/national events. just one year before uci (international cycling union) cancelled the 4x discipline from the world cup race schedule i stopped riding 4x to focus 100% on downhill racing.

career highlights:	-  3rd 4x european championships, elatohori pieria (GRE)
	-  9th 4x world cup, schladming (AUT)
	-  18th downhill world cup, champéry (SUI)
	-  1st european downhill cup overall ranking, bad wildbad (GER)
	-  4x swiss champion, schaffhausen (SUI)

the good part about being a professional mountain biker



something is for sure, during my mountain bike career i got to travel all around the world which is just awesome. when i was a kid, i never imagined that one day i could really live my dream and ride my bike all over the world.

i can't find enough words to describe the many beautiful landscapes i have seen in norway, england, america, canada, south africa etc. another really cool thing about traveling is meeting all kinds of people and seeing different lifestyles.

one of my favorite places to be and ride my bikes, is definitely whistler in british columbia in canada and sunny california in the united states of america.

the best spot to ride in europe i think, are the swiss mountains in zermatt, switzerland.

injuries & crashes are part of the game



in the past few years i have learnet a lot about professional racing in good and bad ways... if you crash when you're hitting 60 km/h through the forest or a rock garden, it hurts. believe me i know that. i went over the bars too often. but you know it is a part of the game and it makes you a stronger and better rider. a lot of guys ask me why i train so often. one of my first answers is always: "you need to be prepared for a crash...!" i think the better your fitness and strength is, the better you can react if something goes wrong. probably some of you still remember a couple of my big ones like
la bresse in france, val di sole and san remo in italy, etc.

here are some of my worst injuries:

broken femur, broken left and right foot, broken kneecap, broken ellbow, broken left hand, broken fingers, torn ligaments left foot, a few concussions, etc.

motocross



i started riding dirtbikes two years ago, during my off season. since then, i have become a passionate motocross rider. i try to ride as much as possible during the winter and when i'm at home around my place.

i wish i had started riding moto a bit earlier, because a lot of my mountain bike buddies come from the motocross scene and they have ridden since they were kids. i always wanted to ride, but the problem was just that it isn't a cheap sport and that was one of the reasons why my parents didn't let me ride motocross when i was a child. they couldn't afford both mtb and mx together, which i completely understand. after so many years of mountain bike riding, i think the most important way for a downhiller to become faster, is to practice all kinds of bike riding.

so if you wanna see some "braap braap..." action, just add me on facebook and check my moto albums. guys, always full throttle and "see ya" on the tracks...