Wouter Weylandt, 1984-2011

I was all set to write a post complaining that, as usual, the Anglophone press never pays enough attention* to the Giro d’Italia but for the saddest of all possible reasons, that won’t be the case tomorrow. Wouter Weylandt, pictured above winning the third stage of last year’s Giro, died this afternoon after crashing on a descent some 20km from the finish of today’s stage in Rapallo. CPR and atrophine injections and the arrival of an air ambulance weren’t enough to save the young Belgian. A race designed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italy’s road to unification will now be remembered for something else.

Weylandt is the fourth rider to die during the Giro and the first cyclist to be killed during one of the Grand Tours since Fabio Casartelli crashed in the Pyrenees in 1995. The surprise, alas, is that it doesn’t happen more often. Accidents happen and the races are (probably) as safe as can reasonably be expected but that doesn’t mean these things become any easier to stomach.

Though cyclists race because they love the sport, it’s still true that since so much of cycling’s appeal rests upon the monstrous demdands made upon its participants there’s a sense that the tifosi are in some sense partially morally culpable for these horrors.