Now the Olympic champion is coaching herself: Jolanda Neff throws away her mountain bike trainer

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He was the trainer who made Jolanda Neff (30) fit for the golden triumph at the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo. But now the collaboration between the mountain bike giant from St. Gallen and Josu Larrazabal (41) came to an abrupt end.

According to the “Tages-Anzeiger”, Neff decided to stop training with Larrazabal a few weeks ago. During the World Cup race in Lenzerheide GR, she mentioned “considerable changes in the environment” and that she was looking for other ways to get out of her form crisis.

Now there is clarity. Neff is coaching herself now. “I have to find my own way as a person, how I work,” she says.

The workout was all about the wattage

Until the Swiss mountain bike star joined Trek, Neff was primarily trained by her father Markus. After that, Larrazabal wrote their training schedules. As Head of Performance, he is a big contender on Neff’s Trek race team, although he mostly looks after the road team. Neff’s training with Larrazabl also had a focus adapted to street sports – with the wattage being almost all-important.

Neff told the “Tages-Anzeiger”: “In road cycling you train like this. But the concept didn’t work for me anymore.”

Neff’s season has been mixed so far

So the split has less to do with Larrazabal as a person and more to do with the way he works. The Spaniard relies entirely on data as a basis for training and sets strict windows. He will of course remain in office at Trek, but the mandate for the top rider of the mountain bike team has ended. Neff says that with Larrazabal’s methods, she temporarily lost the fun of cycling and especially training.

Now the Olympic champion trains herself and receives advice from her father if necessary. With national coach Edi Telser there is also a reference person. With a fourth-place finish at the European Championships, there is a glimmer of hope in what has been a pretty messy World Cup season so far (only one top ten finish in three races). The World Cup in Val di Sole (It) will follow next weekend, before preparations begin for the World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, in August.

Source : Blick