One week before the start of the Track Cycling World Championships, the German federation has announced its squad for both endurance and sprint disciplines. One of the 21 athletes is Pushbiker Moritz Augenstein, who is entered in three events: the Omnium, Scratch, and the Madison – together with Roger Kluge, the reigning world champion.

“Moritz is almost a Pushbiker from the very beginning,” laughs Christian Grasmann. “When he was 18, he sent me an email and joined us for a training session on the track in Augsburg. It was clear to me right away: this guy has talent. As Pushbikers, we’ve supported him – several years as part of the team, and always as a friend in between. The fact that he’s back with our racing squad in 2025 and finally riding a World Championship makes me really happy and proud.”

Because there is something Moritz can do: he brings life into the spaces he enters – with his broad smile and open nature. He sees himself as a realist, someone who has a clear sense of his own abilities. And he loves cycling intrinsically, from within – regardless of the level at which he practices it.

He showed his talent early on as a junior in BDR talent identification races and with strong results and wins at the German Championships. Yet he chose to pursue a full-time apprenticeship as a process technician. This certainly shaped him, as he managed to combine athletic and professional performance — for years. During the pandemic, alongside his full-time job and cycling, he started a bachelor’s degree, studying evenings and weekends. “When the races really got going again in 2022, I was of course immediately back in full swing. Since I’ve always trained alongside work and never known it any other way, I was able to handle it well,” he says.

In the summer of 2023, he made a strong statement: Moritz claimed a total of four endurance titles
at the German Track Championships — in the points race, Madison, scratch race, and elimination race.
On top of that, he won German Championship gold behind the Derny. As some said, he even outclassed the national team riders. And just like that, he reappeared in the top league.

Moritz had guest appearances with the German national team and had to endure quite a lot, both physically and mentally. In sports, highs and lows are often closer together than we think.
At the German Criterium Championships in summer 2024, he crashed because a pedestrian stepped onto the course. While trying to avoid her, Moritz collided with the barriers, breaking his left collarbone and right shoulder blade, and severely damaging his right shoulder joint. It wasn’t until six weeks later that he got back on the bike for the first time. In fact, he still struggles today with movement and control of his shoulder.

“Functions that I no longer have, I don’t need for cycling anyway,” he says. What hurt him much more was that his ambitions to participate in the 2024 World Championships were dashed.

His discipline remains. He keeps riding and earns national team status in 2025. At the national team training camp in Mallorca, the next serious setback occurs: “Out of nowhere, we were hit from behind by a car. I only realized what had happened when I was in the ditch beside the road. I can only remember feeling a blow from behind and then we flew off,” he recalls. Six professional cyclists lay by the roadside, some with severe bone fractures, after an 89-year-old Spaniard drove into their training group. Moritz again broke his left collarbone, as well as both shoulder blades. He spent two days in a hospital in Palma, then was transported to the hospital in Tübingen. Jokingly, he remarks: “The follow-up treatment wasn’t that bad actually, since I was still undergoing treatment for my first accident.”

This time, it is his start at the Track European Championships in February that falls through. “Yes, I feel disappointment,” says Moritz. Especially when you have waited and worked towards something for so long — “and then miss it because of something unnecessary.”

On Friday, Moritz landed in Santiago de Chile. Adventure, coffee, watts, and posing for social media. But for him, there’s much more behind it. “Since this is my first big international race, I’m approaching it fairly relaxed and calm. But I don’t know how I’ll feel right before the race,” he says. His race schedule starts with the scratch race, followed by a day of rest, then the omnium, and finally on Sunday the “king discipline,” the Madison. He has already trained with Roger Kluge and even competed in their first race together in Grenchen last October after their last joint training camp. “I think we complement each other pretty well. I’m more the type of rider who likes to sprint and doesn’t hold a full gas for too long. And Roger is the opposite,” says Moritz.

Team manager Christian Grasmann won his second Six-Day race in Rotterdam in 2017 with Roger Kluge.
And Moritz will also start at that same Six-Day race next January — together with Roger Kluge.

“I have many great memories with the Pushbikers,” he explains.
“My absolute highlight was our trip to Tasmania in December 2018. Winning the Latrobe Wheel Race there was something very special.” The Tasmanian daily newspaper described something that is hard for us Europeans to understand: a German named Moritz Augenstein wins the handicap race — a track racing format immensely popular in Australia and Tasmania. At 21 years old, Moritz became a legend, achieving what before him only the Swiss Franco Marvulli (2013) and Urs Freuler (1982) had managed.
He even improved the existing record of 3:11.27 by over 5 seconds.

“Christian played a big role for me — especially when it comes to tactics. He was also the one who said in Tasmania: Put on a big gear and then go full gas.”

Dear Moritz, we’re keeping our fingers crossed for a successful World Championship in Chile — with the right gear, the calm confidence that defines you, and maximum full throttle!