What grandpa once started is also the grandson's purpose in life. When you enter the garage of the Decker family in the tranquil Hunsrück region of Rhineland Palatinate, you find yourself in the middle of a museum. Historic bikes, jerseys and trophies bear witness to Grandpa Decker's successes, who once brought cycling into the family. Father Manuel was also a successful amateur rider.
Sankt Wendel, just a few kilometers away, used to host many major cycling events. Cross legend Hanka Kupfernagel celebrated her World Championship title here in 2005, when Enzo was just 2 years old. Her World Champion jersey hangs in the Deckers' garage today.
It is not surprising that the youngest member of the family has also discovered cycling. Enzo already rode his first race at kindergarten age. When he was only 10 years old, he moved to the boarding school of the Kaiserslautern Sports School, where he will graduate from high school this year.
Enzo is particularly proud of his selection to the German U19 national team. In 2020, he was with his U19 Bundesliga team WIPOTEC-RLP in the training camp in El Arenal on the island of Mallorca. Seamlessly it continued there with a training camp of the German national team. Preparations for the upcoming season were in full swing and Enzo's race calendar looked promising.
Overnight, however, the world was overshadowed with the onset of the Corona crisis. One race after another was canceled and the future became more and more uncertain. The situation ate away at Enzo and his motivation sank. No races, no results and no more place in the national team.
After a difficult year, however, he caught himself and worked his way back up.
Since the U19 Enzo himself is a member of BIKE AID. Last year he got more and more involved with the professional team and liked their development and racing style. He also identified very well with the philosophy of the club. "I am happy to be part of the pro team from 2022. After getting a deeper insight into the team and the organization, I see very good opportunities to develop myself here. I'm looking forward to helping the team in the best possible way next year!" So Enzo Decker.
"Even though we are very internationally positioned with our team and cycling in Africa is one of our key topics, we still have a home base. There is no question for us that we would like to have a higher number of regional young riders in the team when the opportunities arise," says Matthias Schnapka.
Timo Schäfer adds "although we now have our own development team to offer young riders the necessary intermediate step to the high demands of professional racing. As a UCI team, our goal can only be to participate as successfully as possible in races of the international calendar. And this requires a lot of development on the part of a rider. With Enzo, however, we have a good feeling that he can take this step directly and integrate well into the team already in his first season".
