Fabio Casartelli

If you don't know already, I live in Australia where cycling is a low popularity sport in comparison to such other sports as Australian Rules Football, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Cricket.  This week the cricket family had a tragedy where Australian international Philip Hughes lost his life playing the sport he loved. This was a freak accident that was felt worldwide where many sporting events have held a minute of silence or applause to celebrate the life of Hughes.

This took me back to nearly 20 years ago where in the Tour de France of 1995, Fabio Casartelli, the 1992 Olympic Champion was killed.  

I have gone through my cycling magazine archive for the reporting for this tragedy and just like the cricket world recently, the cycling world was grieving for one of their own.  Stage 12 of the 2015 Tour de France will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Casartelli as the climb the Col de Portet d'Aspet will be used where he made his final pedal strokes.

Casartelli Killed in Tour Accident (Winning Bicycling Illustrated September 1995)

Motorola rider Fabio Casartelli died July 18 after being injured in a crash in the Pyrenees during stage 15 of the Tour de France, from St. Girons to Cauterets.

The 24-year-old Italian, who fractured his skull and received other injuries, was airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in Tarbes where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death was brain trauma, according to a hospital spokesperson. Casartelli was reportedly not wearing a helmet.

Casartelli, the 1992 Olympic road race gold medallist, was in a group of several riders descending the Col de Portet d'Aspet, the first climb of the day, when the crash occurred. Casartelli fell heavily and apparently struck a concrete block by the side of the road. The resulting head injuries caused him to lose consciousness immediately, doctors said. AKI's Dante Rezze and Polti’s Dirk Baldinger were also hospitalized suffering from fractures. The exact cause of the accident had not been determined as of press time.

Casartelli’s death was the third in Tour de France history and the first since Britain's Tom Simpson collapsed and died in 1967.

Casartelli, who was married and the father of a three-month-old son, was buried July 20 in Albese, Italy. Motorola team manager Jim Ochowicz, Eddy Merckx, and Bernard Hinault were among those attending the funeral.

Tour riders paid tribute to Casartelli during stage 16 when they rode as a procession and allowed his Motorola teammates to cross the finish line together ahead of the field. No stage results were listed. The day's prize money and a matching sum from the Tour Society were donated to Casartelli's family. Motorola also established a trust fund for the rider's widow and son.

Coping with the Unthinkable (Winning Bicycling Illustrated September 1995)

By Jeremy Whittle

We applaud their courage and stamina, envying the extraordinary fitness that allows Tour de France racers to climb 9,000 meters of Pyrenean mountains in a little over six hours. It’s hard to think of these rare athletes as falliable everyday human beings who miss their homes and their wives and children, and who long for the conclusion of this hardest race of all so that their days of suffering can finally end.

After stage 15’s finish in Cauterets, it was all there in Tony Rominger's red and brimming eyes as all around him, the full story of Fabio Casartelli's tragic death unfolded.

Yet it was curious how the lost and bewildered press gravitated towards the Mapei team bus. In the eerie atmosphere of the team vehicles parking area, the only member of the stricken Motorola squad visible was Alvaro Mejia. Nobody but the most insensitive dared intrude on the Colombian's grief as he sat in a departing team car, head bowed, sobbing uncontrollably.

In the Mapei bus, Rominger, with rising anger, was watching ghoulish TV replays of Casartelli's last moments; but then, wisely, his personal soigneur reached across to switch off the horrific images.

Moments later, Rominger felt composed enough to talk to the press. "I didn't know what had happened until the finish, but maybe they should have told us during the stage," he said barely audible. "When I rode over the line, they told me that somebody had died — that was the first I knew of it. I think that in such a case, even if you don't stop the race, you shouldn't carry on with the podium presentation.

"There's always the risk of crashing, but you try not to think about it. I have a family and I have a life outside cycling. Racing's getting more and more dangerous as the races get faster. Perhaps we have to consider more safety precautions."

A long pause followed. "But they should show respect for him and his family. I don't know why they have to show the pictures of the crash on TV over and over again," wondered Rominger, his voice trembling.

"Did you know he had a three-month-old child?" interjected an Austrian journalist. It was too much for the father of three, whose face fell in dismay, his eyes filling once more.

At the front of the bus, a withdrawn Johan Museeuw was telling journalists that he would never come back to the Tour. The Belgian had fallen in the same group as Casartelli and knew immediately that the Italian was critically injured.

"I found out that he'd died when I was on the Tourmalet," Museeuw recalled as he stared blankly at the ground. "When I heard the news, I just wanted to stop. When he'd crashed, I'd fallen, too. I was there at the scene for five minutes, waiting for the doctor...."

The Peloton Remembers Fabio (Cycle Sport September 1995)

FABIO Casartelli's bike is still hanging up in the back of Motorola's truck. None of the mechanics have the courage to touch the bike that carries the number 114. It will go all the way to Paris.

The crowds watching the Tour have applauded the red and blue Motorola jersey on the road to the unforgettable finish of the Tour's most intense stage. The day became one long homage to Fabio's memory because nobody had the desire to ride competitively. The riders decided on this among themselves.

It seemed likely the riders would do this right from the start of the day. There were long faces, red eves, few words were being said and there were still tears. Francesco Frattini's reaction summed up that of many riders as he sobbed before the stage start: 'We thought there had been some kind of mistake when we heard the news of Fabio’s death. I don't know how I am going to ride after what happened.

Tony Rominger, like all the members of the Mapei-GB team, was wearing a small black ribbon as a mark of respect. 'I hardly knew Casartelli,' he recognised, but his death has touched me profoundly, as it has everyone. These are the kind of things that really make you stop and reflect.'

When the Motorola team van arrived there was a moment of silence. The six riders were dressed to ride: Armstrong. Peron, Mejia, Andreu, Bauer and Swart all had a large black rectangle of cloth pinned to their sleeves. Andrea Peron, Casartelli's 24-year-old room-mate faced up to the trials of the day with great dignity. 'Yes, I did sleep last night,' he admitted, 'but in my mind I could still see Fabio's grin, and that will stay with me forever. He wanted to make it all the way to Paris, and now I'm determined to finish the Tour in his memory.

‘I have spoken with his wife Annalisa, on the telephone and she has told me to go on because this is the best way of remembering him. And I am sure that is what he would have wanted.’

Peron has suggested that Motorola’s winnings from the Tour be sent to Casatelli’s family. 'It won't alleviate Annalisa’s grief,’ Peron recognised, ‘but it is the least we can do’.

Before the start the Tour caravan observed a minute’s silence. Then, after a few kilometres out on the road Davide Cassani representing all the Italian riders, spoke with Indurain and Virenque. All were agreed. A few moments later, the Frenchman in the polka-dot jersey told race organiser Jean-Marie Leblanc that no one would race for the primes. A whisper went around the peloton: 'take it easy today, one of the Motorolas is going to win.'

Casartelli's team-mates took all of the intermediate primes and at the end went ahead of the race to the sound of both applause and tears. For the record, Peron crossed the line first, but it mattered little. The real victor was the sensitivity of the riders, and the true winner was the memory of Fabio.

Cycle Sport Editorial September 1995

Death of an Olympic Champion

by Andy Sutcliffe

THE tragic death of Motorola's Fabio Casartelli in this year's Tour de France cast a long shadow over what had been until then one of the best ever Tours.

For all Miguel Indurain's achievement of a fabled fifth consecutive win, it is doubtless true that 1995 will, like 1967, go down in history as a Tour during which a rider died.

Like so many human tragedies the death of Casartelli brought out the best and the worst in people.

The best was clearly the emotional display of rider solidarity that led to the Motorola team crossing the finish line in Pau after a day-long promenade dedicated to the Italian's memory. And the sight of Motorola team captain Lance Armstrong soloing to a personal stage victory that owed as much to the power of raw emotion as it did to the former world champion's physical fitness.

The worst was surely both the failure of various individuals to recognise that in the face of such a tragedy the Tour de France is just a bike race, and the tasteless handling of the story by much of the media.

That the Tour organisers went ahead with the prize presentation — complete with a delighted, laughing Richard Virenque, who was unaware of the day's events until he stepped down from the podium — after such a day was difficult to believe. The Tour hierarchy is dominated by ex-pros who one would expect could be relied upon to understand that, in the light of such an accident, gestures needed to be made. Sponsors may need pleasing, crowds satisfying, but surely no-one would have criticised Jean-Marie Leblanc for cancelling the day's official set pieces.

The reaction of some areas of the press was perhaps more predictable. In the UK, newspapers that can usually be relied upon to be unable to find a spare column inch to report the best of cycling stories suddenly managed to locate acres of space to display some of the more gruesome photographs being touted around. The Daily Mirror's 'Tour of Death' back page — complete with a full page photo of the stricken Italian, albeit electronically sanitised to spare readers the full gore — was fairly typical of the insensitive way many papers treated the tragedy.

Britain's tabloids were not alone in reporting Casartelli's death in a less than sensitive manner. Certain other papers made themselves very few friends in the peloton with their use of crash scene photos. And reports of photographers being despatched to the morgue left many riders barely able to contain their fury.

The reporting in the non-specialist press also, predictably, quickly focussed in on the supposed danger inherent in the Tour and ways in which such tragedies could be averted — namely helmets. As quickly as the Tour's doctors could say that it was highly unlikely a cycle helmet would have had any bearing on Casartelli's ultimate fate, the papers could be relied upon to call for compulsion.

The fact is that the Tour's safety record is extremely good. Rider deaths are very rare — just two from crashes in the 92 years of the race's existence; it was obvious from the riders' reactions that the death was a pro-found shock to them principally because such serious accidents are not part of the day to day life of a professional cyclist.

Editor’s Corner Winning Bicycling Illustrated September 1995

A Death in the Family

By Rich Carlson

I didn't know Fabio Casartelli. Never met him. I wasn't able to make it down to Motorola's winter training camp last December, and he wasn't with the team this spring when they came over for the Tour DuPont and the CoreStates races.

And now, because of a horrible crash on the descent of the Col de Portet d'Aspet in the Tour de France, I'll never have a chance to meet the happy looking young Italian pictured in Motorola's media guide, never get to talk to him about what it was like to win the Olympic road race in 1992, never be able to ask him how he liked riding for Jim Ochowicz and an American based team.

Thats because Fabio Casartelli is dead, his life cruelly stolen away just a couple of weeks before his 25^th birthday. One minute he was racing down than lonely pass at 50 mph, the next minute he was lying crumpled on the ground, his skull fractured, his lifeblood flowing from his terrible wounds.

Everyone did all they could to save him. Other riders in the crash, horrified at what they saw, frantically signalled for an ambulance. A helicopter summoned to airlift poor Fabio to the hospital. When his heart stopped during the trip medics resuscitated it … again ... and again.

But it was hopeless. Fabio Casartelli, husband of Annalisa, father of little three-month-old Marco, died soon after arriving at the hospital.

Things like that aren't supposed to happen in bicycle racing.

And usually, thank God, they don't.

In the entire 92 year history – with all those stages, all those riders, all those countless miles, all those terrible, mountain roads all those dangerous high-speed descents, all those awful pile-ups — Casartelli was only the second racer ever to die in a crash.

Incredible, when you think about it.

Alas, even such reassuring statistics do nothing to ease the pain of such a tragedy. But what happened at the Tour the day after Casartelli’s death did offer some comfort, at least for me. In fact when I saw what the riders in the peloton did, heard about what Casartelli's Motorola sponsors were doing, realized how much his death had affected the entire racing community, I felt privileged to be involved in the sport of cycling.

At first, though, I had my doubts.  On the day of the tragedy, the Tour's organizers blundered badly, failing to inform the riders of Casartelli's death and even being so obdurate as to hold the victory ceremonies afterwards, a gaffe that had an incredulous Eddy Merckx shaking his head in dismay.

But then the riders themselves took over. The next day, in what could have been a decisive stage, it was agreed that as a tribute to their fallen comrade the peloton would ride but not race. All prize money from the stage would be donated to Casartelli's widow and child, a sum to be matched by the Tour Society itself. And, in an incredibly moving tribute, the remaining Motorola riders were allowed to roll ahead of the pack at the finish and cross the line in unison, with Casartelli's Italian roommate Andrea Peron edging forward to "win" the stage.

Motorola came through, too. The team decided to donate all of its winnings to Casartelli's family, and the company itself established a trust fund for his son. An obviously shaken Ochowicz handled the entire sad situation with grace and quiet strength. "It's a tragedy for all of us." he said quietly. "But it's even more so for Fabio’s family. Our deepest sympathies are with them." And, later in the week, as he soloed into Limoges to win stage 18, an inspired Lance Armstrong looked up and blew kisses toward the heavens.

Professional cycling is not without its flaws. But I can think of no other sport that would honor one of its own in such a genuinely sincere and human way. A Super Bowl or World Series game played as a tribute, with no final score? A NASCAR or Formula One race run at half speed, with no one trying to win?

Never happen.

Fabio Casartelli has left us, never to ride a bike or win a race or – and this is the truly sad part – see his wife or infant son again. But in the face of all this heartbreak, the sport he loved, in fact gave his life to, has gathered 'round like family. And that's a comforting thought, indeed.

Below is the footage from Stages 15 and 16 of the 1995 Tour de France.