MAXIMILIANSCHACHMANN
SCHACH ATTACK
Multi-talented Max Schachmann is among a crop of riders spearheading a resurgence in German cycling. The 2020 Paris-Nice champion speaks to Procycling about his aggressive style and big ambitions
Writer Barry Ryan /// Mjrka Boensch Bees Portraits
Max Schachmann can’t help it if he enjoys the work. “I’m not stupid, I don’t do this in training,” he joked after sprawling onto the roadside on a hilltop in Portugal. It was at the Volta ao Algarve last spring, and his chest was still heaving from having tried to outmatch Remco Evenepoel on the Alto do Malhão, but he could already laugh at the intensity of the effort he had just summoned.
Professional cycling may demand ever increasing levels of asceticism, but the German manages to retain his enthusiasm for the endeavour.In those heightened moments when the peloton’s rivets come loose, Schachmann typically wears a grimace that looks a lot like a grin. Maybe it’s both.
“I like it when you don’t have to play the normal game with the team, when you just can try something,” Schachmann explains now to Procycling. “I like to entertain the spectators, all the people at home watching, because this sport is better if someone tries something instead of just being there and waiting for the final 100 metres.”
Schachmann left a calling card for his gently bobbing style at Flèche Wallonne in 2018, and his stock has barely stopped rising since he all but rode to a standstill on the Mur de Huy that afternoon. A Paris-Nice win last spring underlined his status as German cycling’s coming man and convinced Bora-Hansgrohe to offer him a contract extension of striking length: along with Tadej Pogacar and Wout van Aert, Schachmann is among the happy few in the peloton with employment through 2024.
News of the deal broke shortly before Schachmann restarted the pandemic-interrupted season with third place at a riotous edition of Strade Bianche. “A really nice race, action from kilometre zero,” he grins, but his year risked coming to a halt two weeks later when he was beset by a less welcome kind of disorder at Lombardia, and was knocked off his bike by a car that was somehow on the course.