Michele Antonelli, a cyclist struck down by Covid. “But without an accident in the race it wouldn’t have been contagious”
At just 19 he was a promise from cycling from San Marino, but his life was cut short by a race in which security measures failed. In reality, it was the covid that killed him after two years in a coma in the hospital, but for the investigators the two facts are connected. Michele Antonelli had an accident on 15 August 2018, during the 72nd edition of the Florence-Viareggio, a classic race for amateurs. Along the way he ended up on an escarpment in San Marcello Piteglio, in the province of Pistoia. Following the accident, the boy registered for the Mastromarco Sensi Nibali of Lamporecchio was covered in a prognosis reserved for the Careggi hospital in Florence. Doctors suffered a severe head injury, caused by a diagnostic blow to a pole, various bruises and lung lacerations. After two years spent almost always in a vegetative coma, the boy contracted the covid which gave him no escape. And to think that the last few months had left some hope for the family. The young man had begun a long rehabilitation in structures such as the Montecatone Rehabilitation Hospital in Imola, treating spinal cord and brain injury, and the Luce center in Santarcangelo. Michael Antonelli fought like a lion, but the situation worsened in a few days.
The respiratory crisis
And at the belle, on 3 December 2020, Antonelli had died in the hospital of San Marino after a serious respiratory crisis. The young cyclist had just turned 21 a few days ago (November 30th). And now for that tragedy the prosecutor of Pistoia, who had investigated the organizer and the race director, asked for a trial. For manslaughter. Since, for the holder of the file, there is a causal link between the accident and the death of the young man. The preliminary hearing will open on May 9th. It was the boy’s family, in particular his mother, who had asked the prosecutor to restart the investigation based on the outcome of the technical checks carried out in the area of the crash. Hence the registration in the register of suspects of the race director, Rodolfo Gambacciani, 71, resident in Prato, and of the 82-year-old Florentine Gian Paolo Ristori, president of the cycling club As Aurora, organizer of the competition. Both are accused of failing to implement the necessary safety measures to prevent the cyclist from ending up in the escarpment after a twenty-meter flight on that Via Modenese, in the downhill stretch that leads from Monte Oppio to Limestre and San Marcello. The formalized challenge to the two, who risk the trial, is that of “not adopting the necessary precautions, not arranging adequate soft protections, without however reporting the danger by means and personnel on site”.