If it hadn't been for -- what else? -- a fall, Alex would never have become one of the most successful Swiss cyclists. But let's start at the beginning...

Alex was born and grew up in the east Swiss canton of St. Gallen and wanted only one thing: to ski. He and his family invested much time in this potential career in the snow, but a crash at age 18 put an end to all that. He had to find a way to rehabilitate himself and come back to his strength. As part of this rehabilitation he tried cycling, but thereby made a tactical failure: he tried cycling in his mother's homeland of the Netherlands.The results were foreordained: too much wind, and so the bike disappeared into the garage. But bikes are expensive, and his father, Walter Zülle, regretted the money he had paid for the bike. He persuaded his son to try again, this time in Switzerland.He did, and with such success that in jeans and sneakers he zipped past a group of what he held to be hobby cyclists, but which turned out to be one of the top Swiss amateur teams. The trainer asked father Zülle whether his son would like to consider a career as a professional cyclist. Zülle senior didn't believe it would actually come to anything ("He doesn't even know how to shift the gears!"), but gave his ok anyway.

After a few years as a successfull amateur, Alex tried to enter the pro leagues in in 1991. Paul Köchli, then the sporting director of the top Swiss team "Helvetia," couldn't see Alex as a professional, preferring Laurent Dufaux. So Alex had to keep on looking...