Historic World Championship gold for Sophie Schumacher - Nevio Bernet takes silver

What an exciting week: From September 10 to 15, 2024, the WorldSkills 2024 vocational world championships were held at Eurexpo in Lyon (F). The 45-strong SwissSkills National Team competed in 41 skills (professions) against an international field of over 1450 young talents from 64 nations. Among them: 22-year-old Sophie Schumacher from Hagneck BE and 21-year-old Nevio Bernet from Ufhusen LU. For the first time, two Swiss champions in the automotive mechatronics category were part of the Swiss national team. Schumacher qualified for the World Championships at the Transport-CH 2023, Bernet at the EuroCup 2024 in Bolzano (I).

Schumacher prevailed against strong international competition from six talented athletes and is the first ever world champion in her profession. The Swiss fans, her friends and her family were correspondingly jubilant. "I am very, very happy. All the stress and tears are forgotten. All the effort has paid off," says Sophie Schumacher after her historic triumph. "I knew it was going well, but I couldn't assess what the others had achieved. Towards the end, however, I was already expecting a medal."

Olivier Maeder, AGVS Managing Director, Education, is also proud after winning the title. "We were able to accompany Sophie Schumacher at national level for two years. The development she has made in this time is impressive," he explains. "In January 2023, she missed out on qualifying for EuroSkills. Fortunately, she got motivated again to take part in the SwissSkills Championships 2023. In the end, she still qualified for WorldSkills 2024 in Lyon. Watching her compete was impressive. I have never accompanied a participant to WorldSkills who was so focused on the tasks on all days and was able to deliver such top performances throughout. Congratulations, Sophie! It was a pleasure to be there and watch you!"

Nevio Bernet, the second Swiss participant in the automotive mechatronics category, was also celebrating. He won his silver medal in the competition against 34 international participants in the Automobile Technology category and said after the ranking ceremony: "I haven't really realized it yet, but I'm very happy about this great success." For his mentor Michel Tinguely, who has accompanied him along the way, winning the medal came as no surprise: "I never doubted that Nevio would be on the podium. He worked consistently well over these four days. It was a tough competition, the opposition was strong. He absolutely deserved it."

Tinguely has been active as an expert at the WorldSkills Championships since 1995 and coached Jean Trotti in 2015, who himself was a candidate at the WorldSkills in São Paulo (Brazil) in 2015 and is now a medal winner as an expert: his candidate Damian Schmid won gold at EuroSkills 2021 in Graz (A), Fabio Bossart won silver at EuroSkills in Gdansk (Poland) last year and now he has guided Sophie Schumacher to the WorldSkills title. Jean Trotti works as an automotive diagnostician at Kolly Aigle SA and is responsible for training.

With the medals won by Sophie Schumacher and Nevio Bernet, this year's WorldSkills will go down in the almost 100-year history of the AGVS (Swiss Automobile Industry Association) one: Never before have there been two medals for the automotive industry. What's more, with 15 medals - seven gold, seven silver and one bronze - WorldSkills 2024 was the most successful vocational world championships for the entire SwissSkills National Team. The AGVS congratulates its two medal winners and all other Swiss participants on their phenomenal performance!