At the beginning of Marco Odermatt’s career, Reusser was still head of racing at Stöckli. He remembers the special treatment he received at the time – and says what the paths of Odermatt and Gut-Behrami mean for the association today.
Walter Reusser became aware of Marco Odermatt’s talent early on.
Jean-Christophe Bott / Keystone
Walter Reusser, what was your first meeting with Marco Odermatt like?
Our first exchange took place after the Junior World Championships in Sochi 2016, when he and Michael Schiendorfer came to Stöckli to renew his contract. I thought to myself: Now this young “Giel” has to have a manager, that’s not necessary. The following season I saw him skiing for the first time.
Did you see back then that he was something special and could become outstanding?
I noticed how quickly he reached the speed of the best athletes. Before these Junior World Championships, the Swiss didn’t have such a good junior team. In order to improve their FIS points balance, they competed in Nor-Am races in the USA. Marco was immediately successful there, he was able to pick up this pace and use it at the Junior World Championships, where he won gold and bronze. That impressed me. For me, that was always a sign of how much potential an athlete has. That he doesn’t have to get close, but will soon have the basic speed of the others.
How quickly did Stöckli try to build something with him?
When you had the feeling that he really had potential. Our strategy was not to have the most athletes or the expensive ones at the front, but to bring the young ones to the top. But because of the FIS and European Cup races, the boys always have a different pool service man, plus the travel – this poses a high risk of injuries and getting lost. I thought: Marco brings so much, he is such a natural skier and radiates so much joy. If we all believe that it will be good one day, we have to do something about it. So after those Junior World Championships we gave him Chris Lödler as a service man. Everyone thought that was crazy.
What advantages did that bring??
Chris is not only a good serviceman, but was also a good trainer. During the many hours in the car they talked a lot about skiing, tactics and risk management. In which race do you push yourself to the limit, and in which is it not so bad not to be successful? This interaction began there: Marco developed his technique, and we then developed the skis in this direction.
So it was extraordinarily early that he influenced material development?
What is rather unusual is that a 20-year-old already has a service man. A pool service man has two or three other athletes, so as a ski company you are of course further away from this athlete. We used every Monday after training or racing to analyze and talk with Chris, talking about Marco’s perspectives and his feedback. We also took influence early on because he was always very clear about what he felt, and with this feedback and the videos we got good insights.
In 2019 you moved from Stöckli to Swiss Ski. What is the association doing to particularly support Odermatt? What other details are involved at this level?
It is important that we give him time and individual planning. He will return to snow training in the summer when he feels he is ready. It’s not just your body that needs recovery time, your head too. Then the most important thing for us is that we always create the best conditions. It doesn’t matter whether it’s just a day between two races so that he gets the feeling of skiing or the safety. The training must be of world-class quality. His colleagues also benefit from this.
Does he not claim anything just for himself?
It may be that he needs a day of giant slalom training because he has just come from a downhill run and his colleagues have already trained for three days. Then the staff waits for Marco so that he can get his day. So there can be differences. But he is a grateful athlete: he wants to train with the team. This shows that it’s not just all the individual teams that are needed, but also a clean organization and a good structure so that every athlete gets what they need. This means a lot of double duty for the staff, but that ensures quality.
Is Odermatt the model athlete for the association route?
If someone has an individual team with five or six people and everything is always tailored to them, then you can’t say: We are now fifteen athletes and we all do the same thing. It will not work. This means you cannot be competitive with other teams that are smaller and more agile. That’s why we are forced to create the best starting position for every athlete. That he can train individually or in small groups if necessary, but can also use the size of the association, in which we have a different strength, for example in the preparation of training slopes, in terms of resources. The hundred people on staff can make a difference, for example on the Diavolezza, where we do everything ourselves, from setting up the net to watering.
Lara Gut-Behrami and Marco Odermatt, the two most successful athletes this winter, are skiing for Swiss Ski, but their paths and their current setting are completely different. Was the association able to learn or benefit from Gut-Behrami’s path?
I can’t say in detail what happened before when there were discussions about whether it was integrated or not. Since I’ve been at Swiss Ski, this topic hasn’t arisen. I’m interested in what the individual athlete needs. Lara didn’t necessarily want a single team. For her it is important what preparation she does in which discipline and which races she runs. So we have to have a team that meets the needs of the athlete. Perhaps in the past it was felt that she had to train with the others. If you had three days of downhill training planned and she said she needed more super-G to feel comfortable on the downhill, you couldn’t provide that. Today we have a large enough staff to be able to organize this. This mindset change was a natural optimization for me.
Can you take anything from both careers and apply it to others?
I think something is very important: the athletes don’t belong to the coaches. This mindset is extremely deep within us. Coaches from abroad say they have never seen such “togetherness”. For example, between elite and junior teams or women and men. If Lara trained downhill with the men in Chile and Feuz trained with the women in Zermatt at the same time, that would no longer be a problem at all. This couldn’t have been imagined before.
Now it looks like Gut-Behrami’s coach Alejo Hervas is toying with a move to the Odermatt men’s team. That would be poisonous for this internal harmony.
Just as the athletes don’t belong to the coaches, the coaches don’t belong to the athletes. That’s why it’s normal for there to be desires for change after a certain amount of time. If this change takes place within the team, i.e. between the women and the men or from the youngsters to the elite, then this is clearly discussed at the sports level. We had planned discussions with Alejo for next week and then the information to Lara. That didn’t work and I’m particularly sorry for Lara. It is certainly very suboptimal that this came out before the last races.
Gut-Behrami and Odermatt are responsible for a third of Switzerland’s points. How do you assess the situation if you subtract these two?
We recently carried out an evaluation of how large each individual athlete’s share of the overall pie is. Of course, Marco has a very high bar in this chart. But people often forget that to get 200 points you have to finish in the top 15 ten times. It looks like these other athletes are making a very small contribution, because the gap between Marco, with his almost 2,000 points, and Loïc Meillard, with his almost 1,000, looks incredibly big. But Loïc is number 2 in the world! It might happen that Marco and Lara are out, then we won’t win the Nations Cup. But last year we would have won the Nations Cup even without Marco. This shows that what Marco and Lara are doing is incredible. And not what the others don’t do. But I don’t mean to say that we can replace either of them. They are too extraordinary as people and athletes for that.
Previously, Feuz was a team leader who was experienced, older, and confident. Odermatt has to shoulder this relatively early on. Is that also a burden?
I don’t believe. He is a very open athlete, and he also represents the culture of today’s boys. Sometimes I hear horror stories from 20 or 30 years ago, when the older drivers often tricked or took advantage of the young ones, but that’s no longer the case today. They have a lot of self-confidence and say: I’m here because I deserve it and can ski well. And if you don’t give me any tips, I’ll find my way myself. They don’t want to be three years behind first. Marco celebrates this extremely. Age is less important here than human maturity.