Suddenly, everything seems empty. The piece on Evenepoel reconnoitering the Giro roads, the rush to get out. Suddenly, the desire to do something disappears, the meaning of it all disappears. Davide Rebellin was hit and killed by a truck that drove straight on in Montebello Vicentino. As Silvia Piccini last year, because the driver was in a hurry and may say he didn't notice, if they ever catch him or he chooses to turn himself in. The crumpled bicycle takes your breath away.
Together with Fabio
On Sunday in Monaco it was beautifully sunny and as we watched the children go about their business, we hadn't noticed that Davide had come forward to say hello.
“Hello young man, you finally made it into retirement…”
The usual polite and shy laugh, wrinkles around the eyes.
“Well, young man, come on… Maybe compared to you!”
We had known each other since 1992, just three years apart, since Zenoni's team of Italians began their pursuit of the Barcelona OlympicsThree of them went, and today only Mirko Gualdi remains to look around. Fabio Casartelli took him away from the Tour, Davide they took him today.
«During the whole preparation for the Barcelona Olympics – he said a few years later – I laughed a lot. I shared a room with Fabio Casartelli, a quiet guy, with whom I got along well.He had some impressive numbers, even though until the Olympic race I was the fastest. Zenoni played on this very thing. He took advantage of his control over me and made Fabio run away.He anticipated and won the Olympics. The thought that he's no longer with us and that Marco didn't make it either is often a source of pain."
The spring of revenge
Suddenly everything seems empty, even the need or desire to write about it, like automatons forced to say somethingYou think of how many you've seen fall and you're almost afraid of doing someone an injustice by not mentioning their name. Michele's smile returns, and everyone comes to the surface. Then you catch the flow of memories and let it carry you away.
“The years don’t weigh on me,” he said 14 years ago, “but I just have to look around to understand that they have passed. Cycling has given me so much and so I owe it so much and I can't even imagine how I can repay it.I don't know what I'll do when I stop, I don't even know how I'll understand that the time has come. There will probably be a sign and I'll say enough, perhaps because of disappointment. Even if the disappointments so far have been short-lived, then the spring of revenge has always been triggered».
Brother Charles
He did not yet know through which gallows he would have to pass, the reason why he would continue until he was 51Dear Davide, how much bitterness did you have to swallow?
«Beijing – he said recently – was a turning point. First there was the career of the best results and the great teamsAfter that, I chased a contract to participate in the races that were best for me and a normal calendar. I have been discriminated against, many doors have been closed in my face.I was still competitive, and the teams that wanted to sign me couldn't. I kept racing for that reason too. Maybe if I could have started again the right way, I would have stopped 10 years ago».
There is a drama within a drama: that of his brother Carlo, the youngest. He had heard about the accident involving a cyclist and he recognized Davide's bicycle on the ground.
Gualdi, Nando and Michele
Messages are pouring in from boys who have become men and with whom they have shared important pages. First Mirko Gualdi: «I'm devastated….. My two friends from Barcelona are in heaven». He calls Michele Bartoli, incredulous: «Just now that he was beginning a life that he never had and never will have. But how can you imagine something like that? The phone rings, it's Nando CasagrandeWe want to talk about it, to share emotions after having shared the journey and the challenges.
«I heard from him on Friday – he says – he asked me if I wanted to do some gravel races togetherWe stayed to talk again, I'm fine again now, it could have been done. Instead now... How many times has he had to get up again, poor Davide! The last time, too, everything was broken. He could have quit, but instead he wanted to get up and start again.Another one of us leaving, it scares you to think about it..."
Dear Government Ministers,
After the loss anger begins to mount. What are we turning into? In the name of what barbarity can we imagine such a mass of deaths without doing anything? Numbers worse than any other plague and certainly no less violent. More than violence against women. More than everything else that gets talked about with such rightful emphasis, while no one talks about our dead..
Il National Recovery and Resilience Plan It includes cycle paths and investments to make our cities bike-friendly, but in the meantime What is done to teach that the road belongs to everyone?
A meter and a half is not enough to teach respect, Patrols should be set up at every intersection to ensure compliance with speed limits, right of way, and the ban on cell phone use.. Instead, in this sort of Wild West, made of abandoned roads and increasingly aggressive drivers, the bicycle risks no longer finding spaceAnd to those who say they're always in the middle of the street, we respond with a provocation: If a child annoys the world heavyweight champion, does he have the right to put him right with a punch in the face? The relationship between weight and force is the same as when a cyclist is in the path of a car or truck.
Dear Government Ministers, dear Salvini, in putting your hand to the infrastructure and sustainable mobility that he will have to deal with, does he want to take a look at our dead and ask himself what more can be done? I would have liked to introduce you to Davide Rebellin, perhaps thinking about him at this moment would have made her better understand the gravity of the situation.
