Back in the late summer and early autumn of 2020, where hope and optimism was in short supply in a pandemic-ravaged world, an unknown entertainer appeared from the mountains of Switzerland. He was daring, dynamic, punchy, and above all, refreshing. He was called Marc Hirschi. He was recently-turned 22, rode for Sunweb, and his first ever professional win was a stage of the Tour de France – he coulda, shoulda, woulda won two more, too. Fluke? Not at all, he won La Flèche Wallonne straight after, was second at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and this previously unheard of entity was third in the World Championships.
He was an overnight superstar. “I was so grateful for such a successful year. I felt confident, felt good, and was thinking this was my level,” Hirschi, a little over four years on, tells Rouleur. “I was surprised because at the beginning of that year in some races I wasn’t that good, but I worked hard and did everything right. I arrived at this level not by doing something crazy – it’s not like I could never repeat this sacrifice again.”
On a high, Hirschi was about to be dropped right back down. In the first few days of 2021, he controversially left Sunweb – now Picnic PostNL – to move to UAE Team Emirates, reportedly increasing his salary from €70,000 a year to €1 million. It was an understandable move, but the reaction was not positive – it’s a taboo for bike riders to break contracts. “We’d been in talks for quite some time, but it was shit when they announced it,” Hirschi reflects. “I didn’t open my phone, didn’t hear anything, didn’t read the media. I knew with Fabian [Cancellara, his manager] that it would be like this: a big fire, then after some time, nobody would care anymore.”
And that is what transpired. But Hirschi’s trajectory stalled: he initially struggled amidst UAE’s collection of winners, a hip problem required surgery in early 2022, and he didn’t ride a Grand Tour in the last two seasons, instead finding himself racing lower-tier races to get leadership opportunities. It wasn’t until the Clásica San Sebastián in 2024 that he won a WorldTour race again – four years after Fléche Wallonne.
“The problem with the hip was shit. I just didn’t feel happy on the bike – I had pain in training, I was uncomfortable in the saddle, and for a really long time, I didn't have a solution to solve it,” he says. “A lot of guys were saying don’t have an operation because it’ll be difficult, but at one point I said: fuck it, I have to. I’m in too much pain. In the end, it helped, and also shorter cranks made me feel better to come back to my best level.”
Being in the shadow of Tadej Pogačar, João Almeida and Adam Yates, among others, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. “It was good because there was not that much focus and attention on me,” he says. “It would have been harder if I was in another team that took me as a single leader who wasn’t performing. In UAE it was more quiet, but for sure it was hard."
Last year, Hirschi found his rhythm again. It went somewhat unnoticed, him discreetly picking up win after win in mostly minor races, but come the end of the year he’d picked up nine wins, including five successive victories in late summer. Five. Not even Pogačar did that. It was the Slovenian who was getting the headlines, but Hirschi was reminding those attentive that he too was one of the sport’s finest riders in hilly one-dayers. “Tadej was winning a lot, but I also felt super good and super happy on the bike. It’s so much more fun if you’re winning,” he smiles.
“It was my decision not to ride the Grand Tours. I wanted to get the feeling of winning again, so I chose smaller races. When I look back, I impressed myself. I went to an altitude camp in Andorra during the Tour de France for San Sebastián and then invested another two weeks at altitude after. I was really living for cycling and afterwards, when I saw what I got from it, it was definitely worth it.”
It was a surprise, therefore, that UAE, the best team in the sport for whom winning is not just an ambition but a requirement, were happy to sanction Hirschi’s exit. And it was even more of a shock that the 26-year-old opted to relegate himself from the WorldTour to the second-tier, joining Tudor Pro Cycling. There was, though, logic and rationality behind the move, beyond the fact that his manager, Cancellara, also owns the team. “I was in contact with WorldTour teams, but Tudor gave me everything I needed,” he says. “I have my freedom here, they work super professional, the structure is the same as other WorldTour teams, and it was a pretty easy decision for me.”
Now that he’s welded his race-winning legs back on, he’s ready to step out of the background and be the main guy again (though fellow Tudor recruit Julian Alaphilippe will be fighting him for the same position). “I look back on UAE as four nice years, I definitely don’t regret going there, but it was the right moment to move on, to go to another team where I can be the leader in the biggest races, and not have to fight internally for any leadership. I changed for performance reasons.”
He talks about returning to Grand Tours to target stages – “it’s a dream to win a stage again,” he says of the Tour de France, a race Tudor are expected to be invited to – and also maybe targeting the GC in future years. But for now, the once-unknown rider who put smiles on weary pandemic-fatigued faces a few years ago is back at the top of his game, ready to disrupt things with his new employer. Strade Bianche and the Ardennes are his first targets of 2025. “Hopefully I’m coming into my best years and I want to see how far I can go. I hope I can improve, I really hope I can challenge the best guys and be there among the best one-day racers.”
