By George Marsden
At 3am in Hamburg, Nicolas Müller was still awake, watching Switzerland play Argentina in the World Cup. A few hours later, the world No.33 would be standing on the start line of his first triathlon.
It was hardly textbook preparation.
“They played at 3am and I’m a very patriotic Swiss, so I had to watch the match,” Müller says. “I watched from three until five, then my alarm went off at five. I had breakfast and went straight to the starting line.”
The football had finished, but the nerves had not. Ahead was an Olympic distance triathlon; 1.5km open-water swim, 40km bike leg and a 10km run - a considerable departure from the four walls, familiar patterns and controlled aggression of professional squash.
Yet Müller also felt something he rarely experiences in competition: freedom.
There were no ranking points at stake, no prize money and no expectation that he should beat the person alongside him. He had entered because his girlfriend was taking part and, almost on impulse, he decided to join her.
“This was different,” he says. “It was enjoyment. It was refreshing.”
The swim was the part he feared most. Pool sessions had helped, but they had done little to prepare him for the disorientation of open water.
“You have to swim for one and a half kilometres,” he says. “It’s not like doing laps in a pool where you can stop every 50 metres. You probably couldn’t see more than a metre in front of you.
“It was a battle to survive.”
That unfamiliarity brought its own anxiety. Surrounded by other swimmers, struggling to see clearly and trying to control his breathing, Müller found himself drawing on the mental habits developed over years on the squash court.
“It helped me calm down and focus on different things, especially during the swim, where you get that claustrophobic feeling because you can’t see anything,” he says.
“You just have to zone out and think: I’m privileged to be able to do this. Just enjoy it.”
Once out of the water, the challenge became more familiar. Cycling is already part of Müller’s life away from squash, particularly around St Moritz, where he regularly rides in the Swiss mountains.
It gives him a way to work physically without reproducing the intensity of the court.
That separation matters.
“I’m a big advocate of putting the racket away in the summer and not touching it for a month,” he says. “I’m an enjoyment player. I play much better when I enjoy it.”
The triathlon offered that distance in its purest form. Müller was still competing, still testing himself and still pushing through fatigue, but the atmosphere was entirely different.
Instead of trying to expose another player’s weakness, he found himself surrounded by strangers willing each other on.
“Some random guy on the side was shouting, ‘Come on, you can do it!’” he says.
For an athlete accustomed to a sport in which every rally produces a winner and a loser, that communal spirit was striking. In the triathlon, simply reaching the finish could be its own form of success.
There was also the pleasure of sharing the experience with his girlfriend.
Professional squash is necessarily individual, built around personal training schedules, travel and competition. Here, they were beginners together.
“We both did it for the first time, so we had the same nerves,” Müller says. “We trained together - some cycling, some small runs and some swimming.
“That’s what is missing a bit in squash because it’s an individual sport. That’s why I love playing for a team. You share the mentality and get energy from each other.”
By the time Müller reached the final 10km run, the lack of sleep and hours of exertion were beginning to tell. Running was never his favourite discipline, but the thought of his girlfriend and friends tackling the same challenge helped pull him towards the finish.
By midday, the man who had started the morning watching Switzerland lose had completed a sporting challenge unlike anything in his professional life.
There were no points, no rankings and no prize money waiting for him. That was exactly the point.
“Everything you do as a professional athlete is to win,” Müller says. “With this, it was the enjoyment factor.
“I just enjoyed it.”
