News Article -- November 09, 2004
Team CSC Readying for Team-Building Camp
While most pro bike racers are starting to think about getting into shape for the upcoming season, Team CSC members will be hurling themselves off cliffs, climbing up walls, swimming across open water and relying on each other to get through it in one piece.
It's part of Team CSC's now legendary boot-camp-style events directed by B.S. Christiansen, a former member of Denmark's commando unit and one of NATO's best-trained elite soldiers.
"It's all about teaching people that they can achieve their goals by cooperating," Christiansen explains. "They have to perform their very best under the worst possible circumstances, where every action has a consequence."
Team CSC manager Bjarne Riis met Christiansen several years ago and the two soon became friends. Christiansen works with Riis throughout the season to help get the most out the riders and help the athletes get through the intense demands of racing.
The two thought the idea of an Outward Bound-style camp would help translate cooperation and communication skills necessary to win bicycle races. Team-building camps have often been used in the business world, but the idea was something new to cycling.
"You have to put more pressure on the riders than the businessmen, both mentally and physically, because when a rider is under a lot of pressure, he reacts very selfishly and that's where I have to work with them," Christiansen said. "Because when you're in the middle of the Tour de France, it's very important to keep up the team spirit, even when things aren't working out the way you thought they would."
Last year, the team visited the volcanic island of Lanzarote, while this year the camp will be held in Denmark. Wherever it's held, it's a difficult challenge, and it's in that communal effort of overcoming adversity that the lessons are learned.
"It's very important that the participants are unprepared for what's in store," he explained. "It's an outdoor camp, where no one can escape from the various assignments. In this way people get to know each other in a completely new way, which at the end of the day will create a team spirit. It's about sticking together when the going gets tough. You evolve as a person when put under pressure."
During the camp, riders and staff members are broken up into smaller groups and must work together to overcome a series of challenges. There's always a surprise.
That might include climbing a large wall or swimming across large bodies of water, even if riders can't swim.
"Last year we got quite a surprise when we learned that Ivan Basso couldn't swim. But shortly after he was dropped in the ocean about two kilometers from the shore along with his group and they had to make it to the coast by themselves," Christiansen said. "If I have to highlight some episodes it has to be when we were in Sweden a couple of years ago where Laurent Jalabert in the middle of nowhere approached me and asked where the toilets were. He just wouldn't believe me, when I pointed into the woods, but in the end he had to dig himself a hole like everyone else."