Home > Fabio Casartelli

1 Amateur Career

Fabio Casartelli showed great promise as an amateur competitive cyclist. He had many important wins and placings in 1990-1992, climaxing in winning a gold medal in the 1992 Summer Olympics road race. He finished the 194 km race in 4:35:21, 1 second ahead of the silver medalist Erik Dekker of the Netherlands and 3 seconds ahead of bronze medalist Dainis Ozols of Latvia.

Amateur results: 1990

• Trofia Sironi: first

1991

• Monte Carlo-Alassio: first
• Gemeli Meda: first
• Coppa Casale: first
• GP Capodarlo di Fermo: first
• Trofia Cesab: first

1992

• Olympic Road Race Championship: first (Gold Medal)
• Monte Carlo-Alassio: first
• GP Diano Marina: first
• Coppa Cigogna: first
• Trophia de Mare: first

2 Professional Career

Starting in 1993, Fabio started his career as a professional cyclist with the team Ariostea. He won a stage in the Settimana Bergamasca race, had a second placing in a stage of the Tour of Switzerland and finished the Giro d'Italia. In 1994 he moved to team ZG-Mobili. For his third professional year, he moved to the Motorola team. He placed sixth in the Spanish Clásica de Almería and a third place finish the second stage of the Spanish Tour of Murcia. Fabio was selected to represent his team for the 1995 Tour de France along with Alvaro Mejia, Frankie Andreu, Lance ArmstrongLance Armstrong (born September 18, 1971) is an American cyclist from Austin, Texas. He is most famous for recovering from cancer to subsequently win the Tour de France a record six consecutive times 1999 to 2004. His success prompted some to nickname the, Steve Bauer, Kaspars Ozers, Andrea Peron, Jack Swart and Sean Yates.

Teams and Professional results:

Teams

• 1993: Team Ariostea
• 1994: Team ZG-Mobili Bottecchia
• 1995: Team MotorolaMotorola started as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928. The name of the company was changed to Motorola in 1947, but the word had been used as a trademark since the 1930s. The company is based in Schaumburg, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Founder Paul

1993

• Giro d’Italia: 107th overall
• Settimana Bergamasca: first stage 1
• Tour of Switzerland: second stage 5, third stage 2

1994:

• Giro di Toscania: fifteenth overall

1995:

• Classica Costa del Almeria, : sixth overall
• Tour of Switzerland: second stage 1
• Tour of Murcia: third stage 7

3 Death

On July 18th during the fifteenth stage of the race, Fabio Casartelli and a few other riders crashed on the descent of the Col de Portet d’Aspet in the Pyrenees. Fabio sustained heavy facial and head injuries and lost consciousness. While being transport via helicopter ambulance to a local hospital, Fabio trice stopped breathing and after numerous recitations attempts was declared dead. Many have claimed if Fabio had been wearing a modern bicycle helmetA Bicycle helmet is specifically designed to provide head protection for cyclists. An increasing number of jurisdictions are enacting legislation requiring cyclists to wear these helmets as well as other items of safety equipment. This legislation is cont his life may have been saved. Others have claimed his injuries were to areas of the head not protected by cycling helmets and the impact from a crash at nearly 100 km/h was so great that no helmet may have prevented a fatal injury. After difficult compilation, the Motorola team continued the Tour de France. The rest of the competitors honored Fabio’s team members win the next stage uncontested.

The Societe du Tour de France and the Motorola team placed a memorial stone dedication to Fabio Casartelli on the spot where he crashed.