Aside from the football, which started off as good news… (!), there’s lots of other Swiss positive stories this month, kicking off with several ladies pioneering in their respective sports, including an Olympic podium hat-trick!
Switzerland’s Jolanda Neff, Sina Frei and Linda Indergand successfully clinched the the gold, silver and bronze respectively in women’s mountain biking. A first across all sports at the Tokyo Games, the Swiss Olympic Team’s sweep is its first since the 1936 Berlin Olympics when it won all three medals in the gymnastics men’s floor exercise. Three cycles before that, at the 1924 Paris Games, it did the same in the men’s pommel horse.
We’ve found our new favourite Swiss podcast this month. From chatting about Crypto (a spy thriller made in Switzerland) to the Swiss woman so passionate about urban water training that she’s spent two decades championing the cause in Boston, Massachusetts. There’s a great collection of Swiss information and stories available on all major podcast streaming platforms or you listen directly from the Swiss Info website.
Have you heard of the 100% Women Peak Challenge? Switzerland is encouraging all-female teams to climb its peaks, as this month marks the 150th anniversary of the first female ascent of the Matterhorn by Lucy Walker and was said to be dressed in a cumbersome long flannel skirt when she made it to the top of the 4478-meter peak. 150 years since Lucy Walker’s ascent, there still remains a gender gap when it comes to taking part in alpinism, and that’s what the 4000 metre peak challenge seeks to address.
Unless you’ve quite literally been living on the moon this past month, it’s been hard to miss all of the space chat. But did you know that Switzerland has played an important role in space exploration? And speaking of revolutionising transport, Engineers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) say they have built Europe’s “first operational model Hyperloop” to test a new generation of high-speed transport systems.
