2023-06-16 16:37:30
He was Swiss, was only 26 years old and he was promised lots of happy days on a bike. “Gino was to compete in the next Tour de France, for the first time. He was both very happy and excited about this idea,” a member of his Bahrain-Victorious team told us on Friday, devastated at the news. Gino Mäder succumbed to his injuries on June 16 in the morning after suffering a heavy fall the day before at the end of the 5th stage of the Tour de Suisse.
Then 27th in the general classification, he fell at the 197th kilometer of the queen stage of the Swiss event in the vertiginous descent of the Albula pass after a grueling day marked by three ascents beyond 2,000 m. altitude. He was found “inert in the water” of a ravine below the road. Resuscitated and then transported to Chur hospital by air, “Gino lost his fight to recover from the serious injuries he had suffered. He couldn’t complete his last and greatest challenge and at 11.30am we had to say goodbye to one of the lights of our team” cries the Bahrain-Victorious formation.
“We prayed and hoped, admits another member of the formation. But alas, we knew from Thursday evening that his injuries were very serious and that the outcome would probably be fatal. We expected the worst. In his career, Gino Mäder did not get the chance his talent deserved. A broken wrist left him on the sidelines for a long time in his early days and the Covid epidemic in 2020 slowed his rise as he took off. Before this tragic fate. “He loved his girlfriend and his dog. He cared about Switzerland, climate change and fixing the world’s ills. A bright light has disappeared,” writes his cycling friend Kate Wagner on the networks.
A few hours after the tragedy, tributes poured in. “He was a good and intelligent guy,” confides one of his relatives on condition of anonymity to hide his pain. “You were a warrior, a chic Gino type” reacts Julian Alaphilippe.
He reveals himself on the Tour de l’Avenir with Pogacar
The Swiss came from a family of cyclists. It is moreover to console himself for the divorce of his parents that he dedicated his existence to this sport, he said a few years ago in a Instagram post as a therapeutic confession. He made a name for himself in 2018, outside the borders of his country, on the Tour de l’Avenir with the IAM Excelsior formation. He won two stages in the Alps and to finish third in an event won by a certain… Tadej Pogacar. The performance earned him the eye of the South African team Dimension Data, which launched him into the big leagues and onto the WorldTour (the first division of the peloton) in 2019.
A few months later, he discovered his first Grand Tour, the Vuelta. Twentieth for his debut, he returned to Spain a year later with Bahrain-Victorious. He finished fifth in an event won by Primoz Roglic and finished in Santiago de Compostela with the best youngster’s white jersey on his back. Tenth in Paris-Nice, sixth in the Giro by winning the 6th stage in Sangiacomo and eighth in the Tour de Suisse the same year, great hope was born.
On this Vuelta 2021, Gino Mäder is committed to the defense of the environment and proves that he is “a good guy”. “Each runner that I will beat on each stage will be equivalent to one euro that I will donate to an environmental association” he wrote at the start of the event in August 2021. Unfortunately for his banker, the Swiss managed a royal Vuelta. In the end, he collects 3,159 euros which he donates to ” Just diggit », an association which campaigns for « greening Africa over the next ten years. »
As if that weren’t already enough, Gino Mäder adds 10 euros to his personal kitty for each runner behind him in the final standings. He therefore finished fifth and that made a lot of people in the retro. Here is 1,370 euros which are added. Total bill: 4,529 euros. In 2022, he decides to do it again but for the whole season to finance the fight against global warming and the disappearance of the alpine glaciers he admired as a child. It was close to them that he died.
“I really appreciated his way of expressing his views on our future. He was critical of the future of our planet, but he wasn’t just negative. He also had a foundation for climate protection ”slips us a few hours after the announcement of his death Olivier Senn, the director of the Tour de Suisse. “Gino was not only an extremely talented cyclist, but also a great person off the bike. I bow to his talent, his dedication and his enthusiasm,” cries inconsolably, the general manager of Bahrain, Milan Erzen.
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