Gino Mäder - The memory remains
You meet a lot of people in a quarter of a century as a cycling reporter. Many sportsmen and sportswomen. Winners and losers, world champions and water carriers, the informative and the secretive. You have many conversations and gather countless impressions. Many things are forgotten, but some are remembered - because it's about more than results and platitudes. It's about personal things, thoughts with a meaning that goes beyond the moment.
The memory of a conversation remains, it must have been in April 2022: a young man spoke on the phone about dreams, private matters and personal feelings. "As a little boy, you stand there and dream of becoming a professional cyclist yourself," he told us about the birth of his cycling enthusiasm - about a day as a child on the sidelines of the Tour de Suisse, the big cycling race in his home country of Switzerland.
He also talked about how he had let off steam on the roller trainer as a teenager after his parents had told him about their separation. And how he now wanted to become a professional cyclist even more so that he could reunite both parents on the sidelines of big cycling races - simply because he was there. "That was perhaps a very naive, childish thought," he said. On the other end of the line was Gino Mäder.
A young professional cyclist from Switzerland who gave you the impression: He wants to take others with him on his journey from cycling-enthusiastic child to professional cyclist. He gives insights into his inner life that few reveal. A kind of emotional participation of all in a journey that nature only allows a few talents.
The journey ended on 15 June 2023, when Gino Mäder crashed at high speed in a bend on the descent from the Albula Pass on the fifth stage of the Tour de Suisse. The race doctor Dr Roland Kretsch had to resuscitate the professional cyclist for many minutes. The next day, the terrible news: the 26-year-old Swiss lost his battle with death in hospital in Chur. The exact circumstances may never be clarified - at least not publicly. No pictures of the accident or witness statements are known. The spokesperson for the cantonal police said that they would not be making any more public statements about the fatal fall.
Gino Mäder: Thoughtfulness in the peloton
The search for the causes of the fatal crash is perhaps also a banality - it doesn't bring the young man back to life. Perhaps the realisation is simple: cycling is simply incredibly dangerous - even for the best in their field. Even professionals like Mäder can fly off the bend. It often ends relatively lightly. This time it ended fatally.
It shook up the cycling scene because it became painfully clear how vulnerable people are in this sport - almost without protective equipment, without a crumple zone, at speeds familiar from motorsport. The pros are said to have hurtled towards the finish line in La Punt at around 100 kilometres per hour. In the end, Gino Mäder was one of us. A cyclist who loved what he did and took risks for it.
Deeply shaken, the peloton rolled on through Switzerland. "In the stages that followed, you could see that no rider took even the slightest risk," reported Tom Pidcock, who was not previously considered a professional cyclist who thought a lot about the risks of his sport. The Briton said at the start of the Tour de France that Mäder's accident had made him realise the danger of his actions, having raced to stage victory in Alpe d'Huez in 2022 with a breakneck descent from the Galibier Pass.
Gino Mäder: It was more than watts and results that counted
Of course, the route in Switzerland was also criticised: World champion Remco Evenepoel asked why the finish was not at the top of the Albula pass, but down in the valley after the dangerous descent. The Tour de Suisse has had a similar route for several decades. Nevertheless, the sport has changed, the power density has increased and the equipment is faster. The tyres are wider than they used to be, but they are still narrow - and there is no ABS on the bike.
The last traces that the professional cyclist Mäder visibly left behind are the skid marks in the gravel next to the tarmac of the pass road, which the officers of the Graubünden cantonal police marked for the accident investigation. Serious racing accidents have often had consequences in the history of cycling. For example, the death of the Kazakh Andrei Kivilev led to the delayed introduction of compulsory helmets in professional cycling - after years of discussions with sometimes nonsensical counter-arguments.
What remains of Gino Mäder is the memory of someone who always wanted to leave a message beyond cycling. Mäder was regarded as someone who was interested in more than just pedalling, watts and results in cycling. He was committed to social projects and climate protection.
Dreams and nightmares go hand in hand in cycling
But Gino Mäder's life and death actually represent the bitter realisation that dreams and nightmares go hand in hand in cycling. Dangers lurk everywhere: The material is fragile, the speeds are high, people make mistakes - not only in traffic, but also during daily training on public roads.
Mäder did not make it to his first participation in the Tour de France. But somehow he was still there at the most important cycling race in the world: there were intense discussions about additional safety measures on the descents of the Alpine stages - including safety measures that were previously only known from skiing and were previously considered absurd.
Perhaps it is Gino Mäder's legacy that he made the cycling world aware of the dangers of this discipline in a frightening way. Perhaps he now sits next to the cycling god, if there is one, and looks on as people think about more safety in cycling in his name, as each individual cyclist weighs up the risks even more than before and reduces the danger to his own life and that of others. Perhaps Gino Mäder would say that this is a very naive and childish idea. But perhaps that is precisely why he would like it.
About Gino Mäder
The professional cyclist from Zurich was considered a great talent on the tour. When his compatriot Marc Hirschi became U23 world champion in Innsbruck in 2018, Gino Mäder finished fourth. He had previously won two stages of the Tour de France for young riders and finished third overall behind Tadej Pogacar and Thymen Arensman.
Stage wins at the Giro d'Italia and fifth place at the Tour of Spain were strong tests of talent in 2021 - but Mäder was also repeatedly thwarted at his stations at Dimension Data/NTT and Bahrain-Victorious - by corona, by his own doubts. On the fifth stage of the Tour de Suisse, he was at the front on the final descent when he crashed off the Albula road at high speed and later succumbed to his injuries. Gino Mäder was 26 years old.
Andreas Kublik
Editor
