Peter Jiricek, three-time UCI Cycle-ball World Champion – in 1999, 2002 and 2009 – made a surprising comeback to the international stage at the UCI World Cup round in Denkendorf, Germany, at the weekend. Fifteen years after claiming his last rainbow jersey, and eight years after his retirement in 2016, the Swiss player made it all the way to the final match.
The 46-year-old from Winterthur had stepped in as a replacement for Benjamin Waibel in the RMV Pfungen team. Alongside Benjamin's brother Severin, Jiricek proved that he was still world class. In fact it was only the eventual tournament winner, Germany’s RMC Stein (Raphael Kopp and Bernd Mlady) who were able to defeat the Waibel-Jiricek partnership, which they did both in the preliminary round (2:5) and in the final (3:8).
Favour out of friendship
It was not the first time that Jiricek – also four-time silver medalist at the UCI Indoor Cycling World Championships – had stepped in to help the Waibel brothers: in January 2023 he also replaced an injured Benjamin.
At that time, Severin Waibel was in search of a teammate for the final of the Swiss Cup, not least because important points for the UCI World Championships qualification were at stake. Severin found what he was looking for in Jiricek, who went on to contest a round of the National League, the Swiss Cup semi-finals and the final tournament[JM1] . The team finished third.
“I only agreed to Severin because we had been training together for more than ten years, and had developed a very close friendship,” Jiricek explained at the time. “I was never looking to make a comeback.”
A lifetime in the sport
Jiricek was introduced to cycle-ball by his father, Petr, also a player. At the age of seven – in the 1980s – Peter competed in the schoolboy league, and at 16 played in the European Cup final (Ostrava, Czechia). He was also active in the National League while, together with his father, running a shop specialising in equipment for indoor cycling.
After all this time, the fact that Peter Jiricek is still capable of performing at such a high level, is probably due to the fact that he trains once a week with his long-time partner Marcel Waldispühl, for the joy of sport and also as sparring partners for the Waibel brothers.
Jiricek’s appearance in Denkendorf was his 74th UCI Cycle-ball World Cup participation. He explains that even with his form and the friendship, it was not a straightforward exercise from a technical point of view: “We are both defensively strong players. We lack the automatisms in attack for a powerful offensive game,” he explained.
Nevertheless, their second place means Pfungen has secured early qualification for the UCI Cycle-ball World Cup final tournament on 7 December in Ailingen, Germany.
UCI Worlds on the horizon
In the lead-up to the UCI World Championships (25 to 27 October in Bremen, Germany), the Waibel brothers are also well in the race to qualify as winners of the Swiss League and the National Cup. The Swiss Championships on 5 October will be decisive for this. The Waibels’ fiercest competitors for the UCI World Championships ticket are also brothers, 2023 UCI World Championships silver medallists Timon and Yannick Fröhlich (RS Altdorf), who also won Under 23 European Championships gold in front of their home crowd the same year.
Meanwhile, in Germany, it has already been decided who will compete at the home UCI World Championships. The newly-formed duo RMC Stein with the reigning UCI World Champion Raphael Kopp and the two-time UCI Champion Bernd Mlady (2017 and 2021) made it through at the first attempt. This was confirmed last weekend with their victory at their National Championships.