Austrian general classification contender Sebastian Schönberger has joined Human Powered Health through 2023. The 28-year-old has linked up with the team on the Algarve for the first training camp of the year.
Schönberger spent last year with the now unfortunately defunct French B&B Hotels – KTM team and had his biggest season to date as he relished moving into a larger role. Schönberger spoke pre-camp from his home in Mattighofen in Upper Austria.
“I’m really happy to be in the team because it has been a stressful few months,” Schönberger said of his situation. “I’m really excited about this new adventure. It’s the first time I can fully speak English for a while and I really like the strategy of the team, so I hope my experience will count.”
The Austrian finished 33rd at the Tour de France in 2022, won the stage 3 combativity prize at the Critérium du Dauphiné and competed in two events at the Road World Championships.
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“I think I can achieve some good results with the team,” he continued. “I’m really looking forward to the race program because it suits me. I am motivated and the mentality of the team is good for me.”
A self-described good bike handler and rider for the hard days in the saddle, Schönberger has also completed three monuments in his career and even raced the inaugural Gravel World Championships in 2022, finishing 11th.
This diverse program all came off the back of injuries sustained when he was hit by a car in training in early 2022. Schönberger showed his resilience by putting in the hard work during his recovery so that he could be on the start line of Le Grand Boucle in Copenhagen.
Having ridden in the service of climber Pierre Rolland in his first season with B&B Hotels – KTM, Schönberger was then let off the reins after his accident.
“It was one of the toughest Tour de France’s and I surprised myself but it really motivated me because it showed that I can do a lot of races in a short period of time and my body reacted well to the recovery between stages.”
Not a stranger to turning adversity into good fortune, Schönberger started on the bike when he was 13 and even though he crashed and broke his arm during his first ever race, the young teenager was not deterred.
Although he was a keen skier and football player it was in his late teens that he found that two wheels were the perfect way to pursue an active lifestyle as he was able to fit it around his job as a plumber, where he worked 40 hours a week.
A move to the sporting division of the Austrian army at the age of 20 meant that he could focus more on cycling, turning pro with an Italian team in 2018.
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Off the bike, in the winter Schönberger makes the most of the Austrian terrain by getting out and mountain skiing with his wife and their dog. In the summer, when he’s not on the bike, he switches his skis for golf clubs and makes sure to get out on the links.
Schönberger is multilingual as a result of his time spent on French and Italian teams, meaning that he is fluent in four languages.
The men’s roster now represents nine different nationalities with the Human Powered Health message growing throughout the cycling world.
Follow extensive coverage of our training camps this week on our social media accounts before the men’s team’s first block of racing in Spain in late January.
