She sees her sport as a small business and herself as the boss – now Alessandra Keller wins gold and bronze at the home World Championships

The final minutes of the World Championship race were a struggle for Alessandra Keller. She grimaced, her upper body rocking from left to right and back on the bike. She was clearly suffering, later reporting cramps on the final lap. Her ability to endure hardship is one of Keller's strengths, and on Saturday in Crans-Montana, it secured her the bronze medal in the Olympic cross-country. Sweden's Jenny Rissveds took gold, ahead of New Zealand's Samara Maxwell.

Keller, 29, leaves the home World Championships with two medals; she already won gold in the short track discipline on Tuesday. She says she's doing so with "proud and satisfaction." Firstly, she may have been world champion in the junior and U23 categories, but despite many years at the top of the world, she had never managed to win a World Championship or Olympic medal in the elite category. And secondly, it's been just nine and a half months since Keller had surgery on her torn cruciate ligament, six years after the injury. It could have easily been a season off, but her rehabilitation has been practically "one in a million," as her medical team assured her.

Alessandra Keller is familiar with the situation when things don't go as expected – only so far, it's been the other way around, with the outcome less than desired. Keller's relationship with the Olympic Games is a prime example. In 2016, she narrowly missed the selection; she finished sixth several times in the World Cup, but needed a fifth-place finish. In the winter of 2020/21, she tore her cruciate ligament while getting out of her car. She underwent surgery in January and also underwent intensive rehab – but not quickly enough for the Olympic selection.

Other riders were preferred over her, and they celebrated a triple victory . Watching this from home was bitter for the Nidwalden native. In 2024, Keller finally made it to the Paris Games, but her legs weren't strong enough for a medal that day.

However, the early setbacks also led Keller to abandon the idea of ​​attaching as much importance to a single race as often happens at the Olympic Games. She preferred to focus on influencing everything she could. She read numerous books about what it takes to be successful in various fields. She became so interested in the physiological processes in the body that she began studying pharmaceutical sciences at ETH Zurich.

However, she quickly realized that such a degree program was incompatible with elite sports. For a while, she tried to do both at the same time, getting up at 6 a.m. for training camps, studying, and then dutifully preparing breakfast with the team at 8 a.m., participating in the entire program, and studying again in the evening. But that was too much. Even for Keller, who has so much energy that she had to consciously learn to sit on the couch sometimes, because recovery is so important for elite athletes.

After dropping out of college, Keller found a way to fill her eager mind with learning in sports. Her family had no experience in elite sports, so she gradually built a team of specialists around her, using the knowledge she had acquired herself, to take care of various aspects of her career. She treats it like her own small business, of which she is the boss, constantly striving for improvement and hungry to be challenged. She enjoys taking the reins. The fact that she is not dogged, but has maintained a relaxed attitude, is one of her strengths.

Today, Keller is completely satisfied with this environment. This includes Ralph Näf, the manager of her team Thömus Maxon, with whom she has been working since 2016. Her boyfriend Nicolas Fischer, a former cyclist, who discusses the right line with her at races or tinkers with the bikes. And her physiotherapist, whom she calls her best friend. Swiss Cycling officials describe Alessandra Keller as one of the hardest workers in the entire squad.

Thanks in part to the consistency of her surroundings, Keller has won the overall World Cup twice in the past three years. For her, it's logical that it took a few years to reach the top. "My development since my junior years has been healthy, long-term," she reflected in Crans-Montana. She is now the seventh Swiss woman to win a World Championship medal in cross-country since the discipline was recognized by the UCI in 1990.

Keller didn't celebrate too much on Saturday. "As soon as I realize what I've achieved, my body enters a state of recovery. I want to delay that a bit." The World Cup race in Lenzerheide takes place next weekend, and Keller still has a chance of winning the overall World Cup. She wants to make the most of her unexpectedly strong form.