About me

UROS STOKLAS

I guess I was made for sports. I do this for myself to achieve my goals. I chose this life.

I have been an athlete since childhood. I was a promising skier, then I took up bowling and cycling. I was achieving very good results in skiing, but an injury stopped me. I focused on bowling, where I achieved everything I could on a world scale: 9 gold medals at world championships and cups; a total of 34 medals in major competitions, six-time World Club Cup Champion, and three-time World Cup Champion…

I took up cycling seriously after the Slovenians became world champions in bowling. Before the World Championships in Osijek, Croatia, 2002, I said that if we won a medal, I would ride home by bike… and I did. I drove these 400 kilometers with ease and realized that long drives suit me. This is how my ultramarathon story began, and eventually I encountered a real challenge, the ultramarathon, approximately 4,800 kilometers long cycling test Race Across America or RAAM (Race Across America).

RAAM is the most difficult sporting event in the world, not only cycling event, it involves enormous mental and physical efforts. You prepare for it your whole life and test the limits of the endurance of your body and spirit on it. You realize that humans actually have incredible reserves. We can say five times that we can’t do it anymore, but we can still continue. At RAAM, you experience this exceeding of your own capabilities. Many things fail, but you just keep going and going.

I always want to win in everything I do. Except for RAAM-u, which is the most difficult of the victory actually represents already getting to the finish line in the estimated 12 days of the race.