Anton Palzer could win titles as a ski mountaineer and chase records as a mountain runner. But he prefers to push himself in cycling.

His cardiologist told him that if there was an elevator in sight, he should take it. But trips to other houses were out of the question for Anton Palzer in the fall of 2024, elevator or no elevator. At night, the German professional cyclist slept for twelve hours straight, then ate the breakfast prepared by his girlfriend and dozed on the couch until she returned from work in the afternoon. This continued for four weeks. Palzer says: "There wasn't a spark of energy left."

At this point, Palzer had already been a professional athlete for twelve years. Now, pericarditis not only forced him into a training hiatus with no end in sight, but also left him almost bedridden and pushed him to his psychological limits: The thought that his career might be over was omnipresent.

Few health problems are more treacherous for athletes than heart disease. Footballer Christian Eriksen narrowly survived a cardiac arrest during a European Championship match . Cyclist Sonny Colbrelli, winner of Paris-Roubaix, collapsed after crossing the finish line, after which doctors diagnosed him with a cardiac arrhythmia. Nathan Van Hooydonck, also a professional cyclist, caused a mysterious traffic accident, which led to a diagnosis of a heart muscle abnormality.

Colbrelli and Van Hooydonck had to stop abruptly. Palzer, on the other hand, has been back on the bike since December. On the eve of the Tour de Romandie this Monday, he recounts how he fought his way back as soon as the doctors gave him the green light. How he even trained for six hours on Christmas Day, then flew to a training camp in Gran Canaria on his own initiative for three weeks. The conversation takes place in a soulless hotel allocated to his Bora team by the French-speaking Swiss race organizers, on a dreary arterial road in the no-man's-land between Lausanne and Geneva. Nothing could be more indifferent to the German than the unglamorous surroundings: He radiates pure joie de vivre.

For him, competitive sport isn't a job, but a privilege. "We get paid to pursue our hobby," he says. Palzer still sounds as if he can hardly believe his luck to be a professional cyclist. Sometimes, he says, a young colleague complains about a bad massage or a boring meal. Then he barks at them: "Do you actually know how good we have it?"

Although already 32 years old, he's only been competing for four years. Before that, Palzer was a world-class ski mountaineer, a sport he'd practiced since childhood, winning World Cup races and medals at world championships. And in the summer, the Berchtesgaden native occasionally performed some crazy feats. For example, he completed the two-day crossing of the three Watzmann peaks in a breakneck race in 2 hours, 47 minutes. What Palzer was able to achieve in mountain running without targeted training was astonishing—time and again he outsmarted the experts.

After the Watzmann adventure, he toyed with the idea of ​​breaking further speed records in the high mountains, on the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc, following in the footsteps of scene star Kilian Jornet or the late Ueli Steck. To get closer to his goal, Palzer did something counterintuitive: He contacted cycling coach Helmut Dollinger, of all people.

Palzer can explain this fairly convincingly. Fundamentally, he says, training in endurance sports is the same everywhere. However, cycling is the toughest sport of all, which obviously also means that the coaches there do a particularly good job. And he wants to learn from the best.

Dollinger did what cycling coaches do: He put his guest on a bike for testing purposes. He could hardly believe his eyes when Palzer completed maximum exertion sessions of three, eight, and ten minutes. Even more impressive than his pace was his maximum oxygen uptake ( _{VO2 max} ) of 92 milliliters per minute per kilogram of body weight. Four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome, at the peak of his performance, only managed a value of 86.

One thing led to another: Dollinger informed Bora CEO Ralph Denk, who invited Palzer to his office and offered him a contract. The ski mountaineer, who had previously logged only 5,000 to 6,000 training kilometers per year on his bike, became a professional cyclist. He made the transition at an exceptionally late stage: Time and again, career changers have made it into cycling recently, such as former ski jumper Primoz Roglic or former runner Michael Woods, but they were significantly younger than 28.

At a team meeting before the 2021 season, Denk introduced the newcomer with the following words: "No one in this room has ever heard the name. But it's part of my style to sometimes think outside the box." He praised himself more than the rider. The scene can be seen in the documentary "Breaking the Cycle." Three-time world champion Peter Sagan wasn't the only one who looked slightly perplexed. Palzer was an oddball and was treated as such.

From his perspective, the whole thing was a gamble. Palzer had previously been financially sound thanks to personal sponsors. An obvious career highlight was still to come: ski mountaineering will be part of the 2026 Winter Olympics. But Palzer was attracted by the unknown. He wanted to discover what else an athlete could offer him. Cycling was his way of fulfilling his quest for adventure.

Avoiding a crash wasn't his only concern. "I would have imagined it would be easier in terms of performance," he admits. At the same time, he was amazed by the professionalism. Having nutritionists on the team who precisely calculate how many carbohydrates each rider needs depending on the race's progress – that was also new for Palzer, who had trained as a precision mechanic as a young man and drove to competitions abroad alone.

He wasn't granted a grace period. At the Vuelta in late summer 2021, which is also shown in "Breaking the Cycle," a sports director barked at him on the team bus: "Toni, where were you today? We were looking for you." Palzer was tasked with helping out: bringing bottles, closing gaps.

He crashed on the sixth stage. In the following days, with temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius, sweat poured into his grazes. He slept badly at night because his injuries ached with every turn. On the ninth stage, Palzer was dropped on the very first climb and struggled with the grace period all the way to the finish. Afterward, he stammered: "Today was officially the hardest day of my life." He experienced the greatest quirk of cycling in full force: If anything can be done, you don't drop out. The next day and the day after that, you still need someone to bring you bottles and close gaps.

Palzer completed the Vuelta. He is likely the only rider in modern cycling worldwide to have completed a three-week tour just five months after his first race.

His life has hardly gotten any easier since then. Even in 2025, after recovering from pericarditis, bad luck continues to follow him. At the UAE Tour in February, it was so hot that he promptly fell ill upon returning to the European winter. He had to withdraw from the Tirreno–Adriatico stage race in March. At the Tour of the Alps in April, he suffered from hypothermia in the persistent rain. But Palzer keeps going. He loves it.