Raphael Schweda

Early life and amateur career

Raphael Schweda (born 17 April 1976 in Rostock) is a former German cyclist. His mother is a teacher and his father is an electrical engineer. He has a sister (Juliane), who is 2 years younger. He grew up in Groß Lindow, a village close to Frankfurt (Oder), Brandenburg. Early in his childhood he developed his interests in sports, music and science. He played piano for more than ten years and participated in highly respected music competitions, proving to be one of the best piano musician in his age group. Although he started out as a highly successful swimming athlete, he was asked to leave the team due to his refusal as to enroll at the sports grammar school. Taking his grandfather as his role model he started at a local cycling club. He proved to be even more successful as a cycling athlete. However, his early career ended abruptly after he was expected to join the local sport grammar school again, which was the only way to continue his training. He stopped all sport activities altogether for almost two years. Only the reunification offered an opportunity to freely pursue his sport activities again.

In the first year as he restarted, he was already 4th in German Raod Championship in his age group. Since then he held a permanent spot in the "National - Team" for several years.

Palmares

His Career after the Sport

2003 he stopped his Sport-Life after the Race Paris Tours. Directly after in 2004 he started as a Team-Manager of the Team Wiesenhof-Felt (former Team Winfix-Arnolds Sicherheit). In 2007 the doping difficulties had his peak in Germany and the main sponsor Wiesenhof retired. During this period the Team won 2 World Championships in the U 23 Class with Gerald Ciolek and Peter Velits. After the Team-Management Raphael made his graduation as diploma in Business Management in the Fernuni Hagen (Germany). During this period his interes moved to the startup Business. He worked 2 years for Lukasz Gadowski, the founder of Spreadshirt. 2006 he founded with his wife Sandra Schweda (former Piplow) the Indoor Kletterwald in the Nova Eventis. 2014 he founded with Hendrik Gruetzmacher and Ole Eckermann the Henara GmbH. Hendrik devoloped the LIMS System Labmin.