{"id":3533,"date":"2020-11-09T17:12:09","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T16:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/?p=3533"},"modified":"2023-10-22T14:21:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-22T12:21:37","slug":"the-decathlete-of-adventurers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/2020\/11\/the-decathlete-of-adventurers\/","title":{"rendered":"The decathlete of adventurers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

He has stood on glacial ice looking down onto lush jungle and run a marathon in the most isolated country in the world. For his latest challenge, Saas-Fee\u2019s Lothar Supersaxo plans to swim across 80 Swiss lakes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many episodes in the life of Lothar Supersaxo read like something out of a collection of Tintin comics. Before turning 18 years old, he and a friend cycled to Paris. His bicycle journeys continued, taking him and another friend to the edge of the Sahara in Morocco, before venturing, alone, to Scandinavia\u2019s Arctic north. From the saddle, the young adventurer also experienced the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland first hand. Years later, he stood on top of the Carstensz Pyramid gazing down at the snow blanketing the remains of glaciers and barren limestone rocks above the endless expanse of jungle that is Papua, Indonesia. He has swum from the infamous Alcatraz prison island across San Francisco Bay. He was almost run over by a huge container ship during a five-hour swim across the Straits of Gibraltar. His partner, Manuela Sigrist-Barredo, tells me that, fittingly, he loved reading Tintin comics in his childhood. She joins Lothar for his meeting with 4545 at 12-inch CofFee in Saas-Fee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
He has cycled to the edge of the Sahara, explored the Himalayas, battled through the
jungles of Papua, Indonesia, swum the Straits of Gibraltar and stood on the highest,
coldest mountain in North America, Denali (6,190 m, Alaska). Adventurer Lothar
Supersaxo is unstoppable. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Driven by wanderlust<\/strong>
The urge to travel, to escape, has been with him from a young age. \u201cI\u2019ve always had a wanderlust inside me,\u201d says Lothar over coffee.His love of adventure has taken him to more than sixty countries. But Lothar is also a family man through and through. He married at twenty-two and was a father of four by twenty-eight. To date, there are five grandchildren. Of course, there have been setbacks too. A divorce from his first wife, for example. \u201cNobody wants to go through that,\u201d says Lothar, who now lives in the canton of Bern with current partner Manuela Sigrist-Barredo. There, he works as general manager of a medical fund, where he and his team are responsible for the credit management of medical and therapeutic practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venturing into the unknown<\/strong>
An adventurer with an orderly life and fixed working hours? It is unusual. \u201cMy projects tend to start life as pipedreams, slowly taking shape over time,\u201d says Lothar. \u201cSomething always pushes me towards adventure, to breaking away from everyday life,\u201d he continues. The Saas-Fee local then explains what differentiates experiences and adventures: \u201cAn adventure always includes an element of calculated risk. An experience, however, is planned from A to Z. That doesn\u2019t leave much room for the unexpected.\u201d Lothar finds that it is precisely that element of risk, the fact that he can fail, that makes his adventures so special. When he attempted to swim the English Channel, he found the waves too strong. He let it go, switching focus to cycling in France instead. There he crisscrossed the country, taking in the Pyrenees by bike and tackling some of the Tour de France\u2019s best known Alpine passes. Instead of the English Channel, he swam between Lausanne and Evian, across Lac Leman. Then he switched to running, and completed a journey from northern France to the summit of the Matterhorn on muscle power alone. When attempting the seven-day Gigathlon, he had to take a rest day and fell out of the rankings. \u201cFailures like that help to push me further,\u201d says the finisher of 21 Ironman triathlons. \u201cOf course, success feels better, but failures can be analysed and learned from. It\u2019s vital to get back up and try again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mountain local becomes a triathlete<\/strong>
Sport has always been an important part of Lothar \u2018s life. Born and bred in the mountains, he often left seasoned, professional triathletes behind when he started competing. He travelled to Hawaii four times to take part in the Ironman World Championships, but he never became a professional himself. He did consider it once, but \u201ccouldn\u2019t have juggled it with family and work,\u201d he tells me. Nevertheless, he trained like a maniac back home in Saas-Fee. After work, he ran up and down the stairs and ramps of the village\u2019s multistory car park. Over and over again. For hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf course, success feels better, but failures can be analysed and learned from. It\u2019s vital to get back up and try again.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A little bit of freedom in North Korea<\/strong>
Lothar \u2018s achievements also include several marathons: the World Marathon Majors, among others. None was quite as special as the marathon he ran in North Korea. \u201cThe country is so isolated that it feels like you\u2018re on another planet,\u201d he says. Marathon participants were only left alone during the race, which started and ended at the 60,000 capacity Kim Il Sung Stadium. The rest of the time, observers from the communist leadership accompanied the group at every turn. \u201cWe were only allowed to see what they wanted us to see,\u201d he tells me. However, he found the North Koreans to be extremely welcoming to visitors: \u201cThey practically carry you around in their arms.\u201d Tourism is an important source of income for the country, which is bitterly poor due to decades of isolation and economic sanctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swimming across Switzerland<\/strong>
What sets Lothar apart from most endurance athletes and adventurers is his versatility. \u201cI see myself as the decathlete of adventurers,\u201d he tells me. He is just as comfortable in the water as he is on land. He has already swum various lakes and oceans, covering impressive distances, showing his endurance there too. He will need it for his latest project, swimming 80 lakes across Switzerland and at the same time drawing attention to the importance of water as a natural resource. In addition to the 28 largest Swiss lakes, numerous reservoirs, canals, mountain and glacier lakes are on the agenda too. No wonder he has no fear of the freezing cold lakes of the Saas Valley, despite temperatures just a few degrees above zero. In fact, he used them to prepare for his \u2018Tour des Sui-Lacs\u2019 project. He travels between the various lakes and other bodies of water by bike or on foot. However, the coronavirus pandemic made planning so difficult that Lothar was forced to divide his water odyssey into two stages. This summer, his journey took him from the source of the Rhine in the canton of Graub\u00fcnden to the Rhine Falls in Schaffhausen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His happy place: Melchboden<\/strong>
The inspiration for his current project came from home. \u201cI grew up in the Saas Valley, and Switzerland is known to be the water tower of Europe. Water, the elixir of life, is never in short supply here,\u201dhe says, \u201cbut the same cannot be said everywhere. The storage and efficient use of water will increasingly become a concern, both locally and worldwide.\u201d He hopes his Tour des Sui-Lacs project will raise awareness of the importance of water. Lothar Supersaxo is always happy to come home to Saas-Fee, and not only because the 1,800 m elevation is optimal for training. The place is special for one reason above all others: \u201cLife in the glacier village is like one big family. You know everyone and vice versa. And despite the many mountains, I feel anything but trapped here. It feels like home.\u201d As a parting shot, the idiosyncratic adventurer reveals his own happy place in Saas-Fee: the fairytale forest of Melchboden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • \"\"<\/figure><\/li><\/ul>
    Saas-Fee local Lothar Supersaxo has crossed the finish line in 21 Ironman Triathlons. But
    he never turned professional: \u201ccouldn\u2019t have juggled it with family and work.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    He has stood on glacial ice looking down onto lush jungle and run a marathon in the most isolated country in the world. For his latest challenge, Saas-Fee\u2019s Lothar Supersaxo plans to swim across 80 Swiss lakes. Many episodes in the life of Lothar Supersaxo read like something out of a collection of Tintin comics. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[288,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3533"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3545,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533\/revisions\/3545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}