September 15, 2009 (Aigle, Switzerland) – Olympic Mountain Bike Champion and four-time World Champion Julien Absalon yesterday donated his bike to the World Cycling Centre (WCC) in Aigle, Switzerland. After securing his position as leader of the Nissan UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in the Swiss resort of Champéry, the French cross-country specialist visited the WCC where his sponsor, Orbea, was taking part in a bike exposition for professionals in the bike industry.

Juilen Absalon visited the exposition before handing over the bike with which he became Olympic Champion in Beijing to the President of the International Cycling Union (UCI) Mr Pat McQuaid. The bike will now be part of the WCC’s permanent exhibition of bikes that have been used in the different cycling disciplines. Some of them belonged to big champions.

Julien Absalon won the UCI cross-country World Championships in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007, and is double Olympic Champion (Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008). With his second place in the seventh round of the World Cup in Champéry, he locked up the series in his specialty with just one race remaining, in Schladming, Austria, on September 19th.

Absalon is no stranger at the WCC, having trained on the centre’s velodrome as part of an off-season training camp with the French Cycling Federation’s National Mountain Bike team.