Zurich Strava Podium Snatcher Runs Triathlon Barefoot
Known on Strava for snatching the podiums on the hardest segments around, Alessandro Motta lined up at the Zurich City Triathlon chasing a real one. A wrong turn cost him a minute; a blown tyre, four kilometres from the bike finish, cost him the rest. Instead of stopping, he ran it barefoot. Interview with Rania Kettani.
“Oggi vinco” (Today I win). That was Alessandro Motta’s mantra on the June 28, 2026, as he prepared to compete for the podium of the Zurich City Triathlon (ZC3).
Motta’s story starts like most Millennials’ Covid revelations. He picks up running in 2020, while staying with his brother at their grandparents’ home in Heidelberg. Nothing too serious at first, just a Covid hobby he really enjoys... until one day, his brother unexpectedly walks into his room and asks: “Hey, do you want to run a marathon tomorrow?”
The Motta brothers end up completing the half marathon (21.1 km), and in Alessandro’s words, they “committed all of the mistakes one could,” nothing to eat before, no training, “but we just did it.”
Fast forward a couple of months, Motta has completed a full marathon, picked up cycling, and somehow ends up joining a triathlon team in Germany, training up to 10 hours a week with a coach. It was no longer just a Covid hobby. Laughingly, he admits that the team paying for the expenses associated with travelling for competitions helped motivate him quite significantly, alongside the sense of community he derived from training with his teammates— “it felt like being in high school” again.
By 2025, Motta takes it a step further. He “has time to kill” outside of class hours, so why not start training on his own anywhere between 20 to 25 hours a week? What kept him going? “I found my own thing,” he said, as I actively questioned my life choices and their associated iPhone screen time. A few weeks later, Motta wins his first podium after competing in a triathlon, and thereafter casually decides it is now time to train for an Olympic distance triathlon (a 1.5 km swim in open sea, a 40 km bike course, and a 10 km finish run, successively). He signs up for the ZC3 2026, aiming for the podium, and he would have gotten it, had everything gone according to plan...
No longer the 2020 version of himself who ran a half marathon on an empty stomach, Motta is prepared for ZC3, confident he can hold a trophy by the end, “oggi vinco” as a mantra. Little does he know a pro signed up for the competition too... He quickly realizes, there is no way he could win this today. Finding himself in a tricky situation, he asks: “oggi vinco,” yes, but “what does it mean to win today?”
Motta reassesses his goal, aiming for a podium in his age category, and he holds the third position of his group for a few kilometers. But, one wrong bike turn, and one minute lost, ten positions down. He manages to get back to the top three while on his bike... but life throw another rock: flat tyre, 4 km away from the bike course finish line. “What’s funny is, I actually went to the bike shop the day right before, got a new front tyre, a new valve, everything,” he reveals.
“Oggi vinco” still on his mind, he asks again, “what does it mean to win today?” Motta takes his biking shoes off, holds them in one hand, his bike in the other, and completes the 4 km by running barefoot. “I just kept my head up and decided to enjoy the run, I even started talking to a guy at some point. It somehow felt special, I was just doing my thing... At the end of the day, you’re doing that for yourself.”
At the end of the day, you’re doing that for yourself.
I was curious: was he trying to console himself, or did he mean it? I don’t run triathlons, but I know how frustrating it feels when you’ve prepared in every right way, yet on the day of the performance, nothing goes according to plan. There is something deeply unsettling in those first moments. You can try giving yourself a pat on the back, but that lingering thought of “what if?” is what can potentially eat you up. So you process, and you decide whether the effort was worth it, whether you want to give this another try, or whether you want to give up. Alessandro was ready to give up that day; he admitted his first reaction to be “I don’t care anymore.” Thankfully, the overwhelming support he received from friends and family helped him go back to his thing, and now, a few days later, he knows he will try again.
Motta finished the race when he could have given up, and who else would have blamed him for it, except himself? That day, he won, not the podium, not even his age group, he won against himself and for himself. Maybe that’s the only kind of winning that’s ever really up to you. ■