Heiko Salzwedel

Coaching career

After moving from his native East Germany to Australia in 1990, he set up the Australian Institute of Sport Road Cycling/MTB programme in Canberra. World class riders, such as Robbie McEwen, Cadel Evans, Patrick Jonker, Henk Vogels, Matt White, Nick Gates and Kathy Watt, emerged from this programme.

In 1996, as a part of the campaign to include professional riders and races in the preparation towards the Sydney Olympics 2000, he was creating the first UCI registered Australian Trade Team: the GIANT-Australian Institute of Sport Cycling Team (GIANT-AIS; later: ZVVZ-GIANT-AIS).

In 1998, he returned to Europe, working briefly as Performance Director of the German Cycling Federation (BDR) before switching to UK Sport’s Lottery funded “Monitoring & Evaluation” unit in 2000. In 2001, he moved on to work as the Performance Manager at British Cycling.

From 2003, amongst others, he started working as consultant for the Danish Cycling Federation. Further clients of his company SL-sports included the UCI, Speed Skating Canada, Swiss Triathlon, Equipe Nuernberger, SRM and the T-Mobile Cycling Team. For the latter, he directed the T-Mobile Development Programme, which included riders such as Mark Cavendish, Ed Clancy, Geraint Thomas, Ian Stannard and Stefan Denifl.

In 2005, he was appointed as Denmark’s National Track Cycling Coach. Within 3 years, he was elevating the Danish team pursuit squad from 10th place at the 2006 World Championships in Bordeaux to Olympic Silver at the Beijing Olympics, achieving in the semifinals 3:56.831, the 2nd fastest time in the world.

In late 2008, he returned to British Cycling as Performance Manager.

In 2012 he founded the Russian professional cycling team RusVelo.

In October 2014 Salzwedel rejoined British Cycling for a third spell with the federation, with responsibility for the men's endurance programme.

Personal life

Salzwedel is married, with two children.