Swedish cyclist Gino Mader.ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT (AFP)
His parents named Gino Mäder Gino after Gino Bartali the iron man, the immortal Franciscan cyclist who died of old age at the age of 85, but the name bestowed on him no more qualities than the love of cycling, of fighting, I despise the pain , sacrifice.
Gino Mäder wasn’t made of iron but, like all cyclists, more of bones and skin and guts than flesh, 1.81 meters, 61 kilos, more fragile than he wanted to think than a 26-year-old would believe that he was on feels omnipotent on the bike and rides down the Albula Pass at 90 hours an hour, beautiful and lonely, an asphalt strip surrounded by gorges and hard stone slopes at more than 2,000 meters and some lakes and green forests in the seclusion. Baja coupled to a Merida bike, a marvel of technology, light, solid, disc brakes, high rims, tubeless tires, very fast, and coming out of a left turn the reason is still unknown, maybe we’ll never know, does not turn around, but continues straight ahead and falls into a ravine. The asphalt is perfect. The sun is shining. Free fall of 30 meters. Empty. A sparse grass slope. There is no more vegetation, branches, trees and bushes that could stop his fall, like they stopped the fall of Pedro Horrillo, who fell down an 80 meter high gorge towards Bergamo at the Culmine de San Pietro during the 2009 Giro and he did it Saved lives by instinctively falling in. His fall attempted to capture all the sparse vegetation that had formed in the gorge and even today, 14 years later, the fingers on his hand ache, reminding him of the moment. Mäder falls into a large puddle of water between stones and the medical service, descending very quickly, finds him unconscious. You revive him. They open a path and give him IVs. He is transported to Coire Hospital by helicopter. There is no medical report, only extremely serious information. A few hours later, on Friday morning, his Bahrain team announced his death.
The public prosecutor’s office and the Graubünden cantonal police have initiated investigations and obtained the testimony of everyone who saw or recorded the accident.
The sixth stage of the Tour of Switzerland was canceled. The final 20 kilometers were contentious up to the Oberwil-Lieli finish line, which the 150 riders in the peloton, led by Bahrain, covered as a procession of honor in neutral gear, following a ritual begun in 1967 after Tom’s death at the Tour. Simpson, due to a heart attack, climbing Mont Ventoux.
The cyclists, Juan Ayuso, the winner of the stage, who had descended there alone a few minutes earlier, and the others only found out about the fall late. Those who saw it live, like Frenchman Romain Bardet, who also saw American Magnus Sheffield fall (completely saved, only with a concussion) in the same corner, say he felt paralyzed. “I was terrified,” he says. “It was going at 100 hours an hour and it vanished into thin air…”
Mäder is treated at the bottom left at the bottom of the ravine through which he fell. On the right, assists help American Sheffield climb up on foot, crashed with Mäder.SWpix/Zac Williams (EFE)
By Gino Mäder, born on January 4, 1997 in St. Gallen (Switzerland), the town on Lake Costanza, which he will leave precisely Sunday’s time trial in which Ayuso, third overall, the fans previously for himself started talking misfortunes as for their victories. In Paris-Nice he escaped, heroically traveled the king’s stage, the climb to La Colmiane in 2021, and when he was already feeling like a winner with 20 meters to go, Primoz Roglic insatiably appeared behind him and calmly passed him. The fans took pity on Mäder and insulted Roglic, who had already won two stages, who was already an outstanding leader who didn’t need a win. Roglic said he doesn’t understand the unwritten rules of cycling, that everyone has the right to win and it’s their duty to always win. In a sort of poetic justice, the Slovenian suffered several falls the next day. No cyclist on any team stopped to help him. He lost Paris-Nice. Two months later, Mäder won a great stage climbing to San Giacomo in Ascoli Piceno. It arrived escaped, its mark. Egan Bernal, who would end up winning the Giro, clocked in at 12 seconds. Italian journalists then asked him his name. They told him about life, the wonders of Iron Man. “My parents love to ride bikes and they named me Gino after Bartali,” said the runner, who actually started cycling at a very young age to help overcome the trauma of his divorce. “But until now, when you told me about his life, I had no idea who he was. I don’t know anything about his life. In August he officiated the Vuelta. He was fifth and best junior. In Bahrain he was a trusted cyclist for leaders Caruso, Mohoric, Mikel Landa and Pello Bilbao. The Covid 19 has tormented the career of Mäder, Pistard, climber, time trialist. It prevented him from making his debut on the last Tour and competing in the last Giro. That year he finally thought he could make his debut in the Tour, the great race to which, always supportive and committed, he also planned to continue his work to fight climate change and protect glaciers, fundraising and Contributions to make money according to their positions and results.
All the cyclists in the world, the whole cycling world, throw themselves into the nets to mourn their dead comrades. Many are critical. They write about the dangers of tubeless tyres, of disc brakes and of bicycles that allow you to reach uncontrollable speeds, although, Pedro Horrillo recalls, braking with disc brakes is more controllable and you can ride with tubeless tires with less pressure and more tread width. World champion Remco Evenepoel lamented the organizers’ preference for stage finishes after a steep descent rather than at the top. The fifth stage of the Swiss circuit ended right at the end of a 10-kilometer descent, having reached the Albula at 2,315 meters. “They’re just looking for a light show,” said Evenepoel, who survived a similar fall from a bridge at the Tour of Lombardy in August 2020. The third stage of the Tour of Slovenia took place in the shadow of Mäder’s death, which moved the riders to tears. “When they told me at the finish what had happened in Switzerland, I was overjoyed,” said the stage winner, the German from Bora Ide Schelling. “It’s not a day to celebrate. For Gino Mäder, these tears are not of joy, but of sadness. Today I lost a friend. I don’t feel like talking about my victory.”
When Francisco Cepeda from Sopuerta in Biscay descended the Galibier during the 1935 tour, he died after a fall because a tube wheel detached from the rim. Descending from the Portet d’Azet, Italian Fabio Casartelli died in the 1995 Tour when he hit his head on the stone parapet of a bridge without a helmet, and 20 years ago, in the Paris-Nice race in 2003, he came perished himself in Saint Étienne of the Kazakhs Andrei Kivilev after hitting his head in a fall from a pass. His death hastened the introduction of compulsory helmets, an element that did not prevent Belgian Wouter Weylandt from dying at the 2011 Giro after falling from the Bocco in the Ligurian Apennines.
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