Three-time Pump Track World Champion and newly qualified doctor Christa von Niederhäusern lives between two worlds: one ruled by fractions of a second, the other by saving them.
Rhythm, precision, repeat
Pump, pump, manual, pump, push into the corner… The words run in rhythm as Christa von Niederhäusern, Swiss rider and three-time Pump Track World Champion, talks through how she visualises a lap of the track where she claimed one of her titles.
Pump track sits on the fringe of mainstream bike racing, but it’s brutally exact with high speeds, tiny margins of error and no second chances. With so much on the line, safety isn’t an afterthought; it’s built in.
The sun drops behind the Bernese Alps. At the Swiss Bike Park in Oberried, a few kids are still rolling out their last laps. Then Christa drops in. The track snaps awake. Every roller fires her forward. She digs in, carves high, smooth as hell, and is gone again before the dust even settles.
Lap after lap, it builds. Breath heavy, eyes bright. That buzz that never gets old. Helmet off, chest still heaving, she’s grinning. You can’t not want to ride when she’s like this.
“It’s the corners where you gain the most time,” she says. “The straights are similar for everyone, but the line choice through the corners – as high as possible – that’s where races are won.”
She laughs about the nerves that hit a week before each event, and how they vanish the second she’s on the start ramp. “Then I feel great.”
Little bikes have always been her thing. She started racing BMX at eight, and in 2018 entered her first pump track event, winning a trip to the US for the inaugural World Championships. “I like the precision of pump track, and the fact that it’s you against the clock,” she says.
When she’s not riding, she’s coaching at the same BMX club where she first learned to race. The kids she trains are wild. “They’re pretty robust,” she says. “They bounce back fast.”
That resilience carries into her other life. Christa recently qualified as a doctor and now works in the emergency room, specialising in paediatrics. “There are always quite a few kids at the pump track,” she says, glancing over as one slides out. “But luckily the jump into medical mode doesn’t happen often — but it has. Once it was a dad who crashed and needed emergency care.”
Her colleagues at the hospital know about her racing, even if most hadn’t heard of pump track until her silver medal at this year’s World Championships in Valais put it on the Swiss sporting map. “They always ask how I manage both,” she says. “But it just feels normal to me. My brother races, my boyfriend races, it’s kind of how life’s always been.”
Speed and safety sit in constant tension. “That’s something I try not to think about,” she says. “This year I had two big crashes, one after the other. The first was stupid; I went into a corner too high. The second was on new tyres, wet conditions, dislocated shoulder. Seven weeks before Worlds.”
Still, she raced. Still, she got second. “Racing pump track is all about precision. Trying to ride the perfect lap – it doesn’t happen often. When it does, you just feel it. Everything goes exactly as it should. It’s rare.”
Off-season means more gym and cardio, a little less time on the track, but the rhythm never really fades. “I’ll still come here once or twice a week if there’s no snow,” she says, clipping her helmet back on.
Pump, pump, manual, pump – and she’s gone again, chasing that perfect lap.
