A few months ago he had participated in a race in honor of his mentor Alex Zanardi, finished with his handbike under a truck during a demonstration. Destiny has reserved a similar incident for him and now Gioacchino Fittipaldi he is hospitalized in very serious conditions at the Niguarda hospital in Milan. It was just after 16.30 on Thursday when the 28-year-old was hit by a truck in a roundabout and got stuck under the wheels of the heavy vehicle. To free him, the intervention of the Fire Brigade was needed, then the desperate flight to the hospital by air ambulance.
Fittipaldi is a professional athlete, who participated in the Italian Championships of para-cycling, international marathons and the Giro d’Italia. Very close to Alex Zanardi, he is now fighting for his life due to various traumas to the chest.
The terrible accident brings attention to the danger of a sporting activity on the road which, like cycling, unfortunately claims many victims every year.
«The handbike, downhill, goes at double the speed of racing bikes», Luca Mazzone, Alex Zanardi’s teammate, said last summer, «I’m honest, it’s a sport that I would not recommend to my son. It’s too much risky. Before the races I think of my wife and my son, so I avoid going too fast in the most dangerous sections ».
Given the particular aerodynamic shape, in certain situations the handbike really becomes a bullet and having only one front wheel does not guarantee its good stability. In addition, being a very low vehicle, the risk that it can escape the often distracted eye of motorists is very high. For this reason some athletes place high flags on the back, but even so the possibility of being run over is not excluded.
Just in these days the docu-film that tells the great experience of Alex Zanardi and his team through Italy was presented to the press. Title: The great relay. Produced by Barbara Manni, sister of Daniela, the wife of the Bolognese champion, the work retraces the journey made by the couple together with other members of the Obiettivo3 non-profit organization. A touching short film, in which the champion talks about his love for sport and for life.
Exciting and adrenaline-pumping, the documentary it suddenly becomes moving when he shows Zanardi on the morning of June 19, 2020, a few hours before the terrible accident, saying: “This is the best day of my life”.
The next sequence sees Zanardi slumped to the ground with his (pregnant) wife next to him trying to rescue him. It could have been the scene of the end of a life, it is instead that of the beginning of the third part of that of Alex.
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