How did you become involved in athletics?
Already as a little boy I was interested in athletics. When I was 16 years old I joined the Track and Field Club of Schaffhausen/Switzerland. After my time as a junior I specialised in 400 m hurdles and became an international athlete with more than 25 nominations for the Swiss Team including European Championships and Olympic Games.

You have been Swiss Record Holder at 400 m hurdles. How did your sporting career influence your present position?
In my time, the Swiss Athletics Association was undergoing massive changes. Out of two Associations became one in 1971. During the negotiations with the management I headed a group of athletes claiming a say regarding high-performance sport. This meant the beginning of my various engagements in athletics.

Have you been involved in sport in a different way – as a coach or official for example?
When I was still an active athlete, there were no coaches in Switzerland with enough knowledge and experience on international level. For this reason I took care of the training and coaching myself. Already during my active time as an athlete I shared my knowledge with younger athletes and therefore became the national coach of the hurdles team. Slightly later I took over the function as Head of the High-Performance Department. With the general development of sports marketing, the Swiss Athletics Association appointed me as the Director of the Federation responsible for Marketing and High-Performance Sport.

What do you personally gain from athletics in particular?
Athletics became an integral part of my life due to the various tasks I fulfilled. I am very happy to be able to implement my experience also today in various functions in the field of sport.

Your profession is listed as Marketing Consultant. Can you explain what this consists in?
My original education and occupation consisted of a technical as well as commercial education in the main field of sales, marketing and organisation. Due to my appointment with the Swiss Athletics Association I intensively dealt with sports marketing and its development. This broad knowledge I now make available to diverse sports organisations and I am in charge of diverse projects on a mandate level.

How does your attitude to athletics influence your career?
Athletics had an immense impact on my career. In the beginning there was the training which had to be optimally combined with my education and language studies. Later on the Swiss Athletics Association was interested in my professional knowledge and athletics became my full-time profession for more than 12 years. Since then I offer my knowledge to the economy as well as to different sports organisations on a consulting basis, whereby athletics still is of significant importance.

How do you manage to combine a career with your deep commitments to athletics and sport?
Since athletics was for a certain time my full-time profession, the combination of it was easy but very time-consuming.

What are your hobbies and interests?
I still like to practise sports. Since I originate from a winter sport country, I love downhill as well as cross-country skiing. I also like bicycling and running. Unfortunately there is very little time nowadays for these hobbies.

Do you have children? And if so, did you encourage them to practise sport?
We have two children who both practice different sports, but not high-performance sport (downhill and cross-country skiing, bicycling, running). Reto, our son, was intensively practising athletics as a junior, our daughter Denise played regularly volleyball.

Europe has a very old tradition in athletics. It is considered to be the "old continent" in opposition to new continents emerging in the international sporting scene. How do you see the situation?
The diverse activities in athletics being organised every year in Europe build an important basis for our sport. Not only the number of meetings is of significance for the acceptance and the popularity of the most important Olympic sport. It is also of utmost importance that the European athletes are successful in the championships. Without these particular results we run the risk that, due to the strong competition with other sports, a drift sets in combined with enormous economical consequences.

How would you position Europe in the World athletics?
European athletics won about 50 % of the medals at the last World Championships. This strong position is based on the strength in the technical disciplines. Within the running competitions our position is weaker. The efforts in favour of the new generations are very important for this development. The Junior as well as the U23 European Championships but also the lower leagues in the European Cup are significant elements in this building up program.

How important is athletics to the Swiss sports' scene? What are the prospects for the future?
Athletics has a high rank in Switzerland and is one of the most important sports associations in our country. Thanks to individual top athletes we can celebrate outstanding results, which find considerable notice in our population. Switzerland will also in the future have its few individual top athletes, but is too small for several athletes on top international level.

And what about Europe as a whole? How would you summarise the current situation and the future and what do you hope to achieve as European Area Representative on the IAAF Council?
I hope that in the future we can develop an integrated system for the various parties involved such as Federations, Meeting Organisers, Athletes Representatives and the athletes themselves. With such a system the partly existing isolation, which does not secure the success, will be left behind without loosing the own identity. These ideas should lead to a renewed competition system which can be understood easily, which is balanced and where the interests of all parties are considered. This is even more important for Europe since during the summer months our Continent faces an enormous concentration and athletes from all over the world are in Europe during these months.

Would you consider the 2000 European Indoor Championships as a success? Why?
The European Indoor Championships 2000 in Gent were a big success. New participants record, high number of spectators, high performance level, interesting competitions and spectacular TV images where the highlights of this event.