Gino Mader dead at the Tour of Switzerland: the dynamics of the accident – Corriere.it

This time it’s not the helmet’s fault (Kivilev, Casartelli), of a dog crossing the street (Agostino), a roadside curbstone (Lambrecht), of a motorcycle that swerves (Demoites), of a car against traffic (Monser) or of the protruding and unprotected wall that killed the poor man John Ianelli. Gino Mader died yesterday in the Chur hospital after twenty hours of agony from the consequences of a ruinous and banal fall in a fast but not dangerous section of the 5th stage of the Tour of Switzerland. A couple fall in which the 26-year-old from the Canton of St. Gallen crashed into an escarpment together with the American Magnus Sheffield: Magnus got up, Gino didn’t.

If in the absence of images the dynamics of the accident and maybe it will remain unknown forever (which of the two riders, alone at that moment, skidded first and whether they touched each other), the kinematics is clear because the on-board computer on Magnus Sheffield’s bike was not destroyed in the impact and he posted the data in automatically on the network. At kilometer 207.1 (there were four to go at the finish line), in a curve that leaned gently to the right, the Sheffield Pinarello went from 94.6 to 0 kilometers per hour in a few secondscrashing on the side of the road. Magnus and Gino were thrown thirty meters below and while the American landed on a grass, thereThe Swiss probably slammed hard into a water main and then bounced into a stream three meters away.

Doctors and rescuers rushed to the scene: Sheffield was in a daze but unharmed, Mader was resurrected from cardiac arrest via massage and defibrillator use. During stabilization and before being transported by helicopter to the hospital, the doctors realized that the boy’s life was compromised due to the number and severity of the internal fractures and informed the family members to prepare for the worst.

Gino Mader was a versatile runner: faithful wingman for the captains of the Bahrain-Victorious team (Caruso, Poels, Bilbao, Landa) but also capable of winning a stage in the Giro d’Italia (that of Ascoli in 2021) or finishing fifth in the Vuelta ahead of Egan Bernal. Of his debut among the professionals in 2019 with the Dimension Data he joyfully remembered the smiles of African children when we gave them bicycles. I too was looking for the same pleasure on a bike, I wanted to have fun running. Within the team, Gino was in charge of promoting the Green Hope project in support of young cancer patients.

He was a talented, discontinuous runner, unfortunate man who at the last minute was prevented from participating in the 2022 Giro and Tour by Covid, a Tour that had never raced and will never race. On March 7, 2021, still without success, Mader performed in a heroic solo escape (his specialty) at Paris-Nice. But twenty meters from the finish, a cannibal and uselessly selfish Roglic snatched the victory from him, greatly booed by the audience. Mader yes compliment anyway: In cycling you have to learn to accept defeats. Yesterday my colleagues remembered him with a stage-pilgrimage reduced to thirty kilometres, pedaling in an emotional and surreal silence.