Tour de France pays respects to 19-year-old cyclist who died after a crash in Italy
Privitera crashed in the first stage of the Tour of Valle D'Aosta in the northwestern municipality of Pontey on Wednesday.
Race organizers said the circumstances of the accident were 'still unclear and are being investigated by public safety authorities.'
Privitera was a member of the Hagens Berman Jayco team, the development team for Jayco Alula, which is racing at the Tour de France and whose members including Ben O'Connor wore black armbands.
'Samuele was and always will be the life and personality of this team,' Hagens Berman Jayco team director Axel Merckx said in a statement. 'This team has always been a small family, and moments like this are unimaginable. He was irreplaceable. His joy, his spirit, his kindness, was always a bright light to whatever room or race that he was in at that moment. To lose him is devastating beyond words.'
Italian media reports said Privitera crashed on a descent about 35 kilometers from the finish in Aosta at a speed of almost 70 kph. He reportedly lost his helmet and crashed into a barrier.
The second stage of the the Tour of Valle D'Aosta was canceled and participating teams were being given a choice whether to continue with the third stage on Friday.
Tour de France riders also expressed their sorrow on social media.
'Rest in peace,' race favorite Tadej Pogačar, who crashed on Wednesday, wrote on Instagram.
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'When I go very fast and attack the downhill, I take a risk,' says four-time Grand Tour winner Vincenzo Nibali. 'It's normal. It's my work.' 'You play with your life,' adds Fabian Cancellara, one of the greatest Monument riders of all time. 'Let's be honest, that's what we do. I don't want to say I'm addicted to it. But it definitely has a little of that addiction.' Advertisement Descending is one of the core skills of the professional peloton. It is also a unique one. Unlike climbing or sprinting, it is less of a pure test of physical ability; more a reckoning of psychological and technical skill. There is a craft to it, certainly, but also a genuine danger. Riders regularly travel at over 100kph, protected from the asphalt by only their reflexes, helmet, and lycra. It is an aspect of the sport where tragedy is a sad and lived reality. Earlier this month a 19-year-old rider, Samuele Privitera, died while riding in the Giro della Valle d'Aosta in Italy. But riders cannot win without descending quickly. It means its best practitioners are legendary — from Il Falco, Paolo Savoldelli, 20 years ago, to the daredevil exploits of Q36.5's Tom Pidcock in recent seasons. On stage 18, the 19km descent of the Col du Glandon and the Col de la Madeleine will be crucial to this year's Tour de France. The Athletic spoke to some of its greatest practitioners to discuss its art. Are you born a great descender, or can you become one? In many ways, riders are relying on instinct, in others, it is a skill that can be developed like any other. Oscar Saiz is a coach who specialises in aiding cyclists develop their descending, currently working for Lidl-Trel. 'The athletes that are really gifted are those that have a pilot's brain,' he explains. 'It allows you to grasp distances, the speed — it's a 3D scan that works a little better than others. It's this which means you understand immediately whether the rider is good — this is the gifted part. 'But then there's another part which is more like the coordination and bike-handling — and that's the easiest part to work on. You can improve it. But if you don't have the gift, it's way more difficult to develop. Without it, you'll never be the best, but you can get to the point where it's not going to jeopardise your performance.' Advertisement But one of the main challenges of descending is just how hard it is to practice. Unlike climbing, where hard efforts can be put in as your body dictates, descending at full speed requires closed roads and an attitude to risk that cannot be sustained over an entire season. Bahrain Victorious' Matej Mohorič is one of the best descenders in the peloton, having won Milan-San Remo in 2022 after attacking down the Poggio, one of the most iconic moves of recent years. 👨🏫 A lezioni di discesa: masterclass del professor @matmohoric. Non provateci a casa! 👨🏫 Mastering a descent: a masterclass by @matmohoric. Hey, don't try this at home!#MilanoSanremo — Milano Sanremo (@Milano_Sanremo) March 19, 2022 'I think good descending needs to be subconscious, but built around the confidence of recent experience,' Mohorič explains. 'I see myself that I'm best when I ride a lot, when I do a lot at high speed, but in the winter when the roads are wet, I don't want to risk and push in training. To be honest, there's no real opportunity outside racing. 'In training, I'd never use the whole lane, not even my own lane. Especially on the right-handers, I would always exit completely on the right (to avoid cars), which is not at all what you'd do in a race, where you'd cut to the apex and go all the way out to the left. 'Some things are possible to practice at lower speed — like counter-steering, putting your weight over the tires and turning the handlebars the opposite direction. But in the fast corners of a race, you wouldn't use counter-steering, but you'd lean your body at high speed as well. It would be not just stupid, but irresponsible to do this on an open road, in open traffic.' Watch Mohorič descent the Poggio for an exhibition of these skills. He rides to the ragged edge, narrowly avoiding drains and concrete walls. He was also using an adjustable dropper post, which allowed him to be more aerodynamic and carry more speed, but which made bike-handling an ever tougher challenge. At the top of the descent, he told fellow Slovenian Tadej Pogačar not to follow him, if the reigning Tour champion valued his safety. Pogačar listened. Mohorič won. 'That's the only time I ever did that descent on a closed road,' he remembers. 'I knew it well, because I lived nearby and did it a million times. But at the start, I was really close to what I thought the limit was. And on the last left corner I said to myself: 'I think that with this bike, at this speed, with this seat post, there is no limit to how much you can lean and how low you can get.' I didn't brake, but then I started to lose grip when I was close to the apex, and needed to brake hard. I almost crashed myself. I saved it — but it was over the limit.' Another former winner of Milan-San Remo is Nibali, generally seen as the best descender of the 2010s. Like Mohorič, he opened a gap on the Poggio before soloing to victory. He was certainly one of the most beautiful descenders, taking smooth, arcing lines, barely appearing to touch the brakes. 'The key for me is to have good mobility of the body,' Nibali says over a call, high in the Italian mountains. 'It means you can set up the curve better, and be much softer physically. When the body is comfortable on the bike, and the weight distribution is perfect between the front and back wheel, it means everything is relaxed when you approach the corner. If you are a little stiff, the bike throws itself to the outside, and doesn't follow the right line.' Advertisement Sometimes, Nibali remembers, he and his friends used to lean on the high speed corners, and with their inside hand, trail it across the tarmac. 'It's only something you can do if you're an expert — for fun… or to scare your training partner.' Nibali grew up in Sicily. He says the island's roads were particularly slippery which helped him get used to relying on sensation. 'I think it's more important, however, when I was younger, to spend so much time on my mountain bike. It's so important for young riders to practise the other disciplines, it helps your body control so much. Look at Tom Pidcock, he's a mountain biker, he does cyclo-cross, and so when he rides the road bike, you see how controlled he is.' 🔥À demain. 9h. 👋@NetflixFR — Tour de France™ (@LeTour) June 7, 2023 For Nibali, his process for each corner did not differ. He only crashed during a high-stakes descent once, during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. 'Before setting up for the curve, you have to evaluate the conditions of the asphalt,' he says. 'Then I'd try and keep myself as close to the outside as possible without going into the dirt on the outside. And then it's about making a clean line. If it's an S-shape, you might need to delay your entry to the first curve slightly, and then the entry to the second curve is improved.' 'It's like a surfer on their perfect wave,' adds Cancellara. 'It's a flowing movement — everyone else is saying 'wow', but for you, you're just guiding your way down.' Listening to them speak and describe descending, one truth appears apparent. Is fast descending also beautiful descending? A former mountain biker, Saiz has devoted much of his life to that question, coaxing riders such as Enric Mas and Thibaut Pinot down mountains, working to build up their descending confidence. Advertisement 'When I started working with Enric, he'd had a really tough time at the Tour de France,' says Saiz. 'He realized that if he was struggling to descend, it would be really detrimental to his GC hopes. There was so much pressure on him, from his team, from the media, from himself. We needed to do something before the world championships in three weeks' time. There, he managed to finish second. It was a metamorphosis — and it took three or four sessions. 'As for Thibaut Pinot, he said at the 2013 Tour de France that he felt anxious on the bike, uncomfortable, with all these fears. So what we needed to do was to go all the way back to square one, to the basics which can be done when you're a kid.' Saiz would ride up with them, on his own limit, at their easy pace, and give them in the moment feedback as they descended. Drills and video analysis are also part of his technique. 'Off-roading is also important,' he explains. 'It helps a lot, really minimises risk because the speeds are lower, and there are techniques you can grab that help on the tarmac later.' Ultimately, many of Saiz's clients are dealing with fear — an emotion few professional cyclists admit to, but which nonetheless exists. It only inhibits performance. 'When you're young, you just go down, you don't think,' says Cancellara. 'But when you get older, you might start to have family responsibilities. Sometimes you go just a little bit less.' Cédrine Kerbaol is one of the best descenders in the women's peloton, becoming the first French rider to win a stage of the Tour de France Femmes after attacking down the Côte des Fins last summer. 'You have to be able to disconnect your brain and think about the moment,' she says. 'Because if you think about everything that could happen, or anything you could do in another way, then you get stuck in inaction. That's dangerous, because if you're scared of every corner or brake every time you see some small rocks, you are much more likely to crash at this point. Advertisement 'Of course you do need to think — but I think this takes place before the race, when I consider how much risk I want to take, what kind of risk. But if you think about it during the race, it's not easy. 'For me, it's sort of a game when I go down. It's the fun part, because my legs are not hurting. It's relaxing. I think you have fear when something happens — like if your wheel slips, you are scared for moment, for 10 seconds, and then you forget about it.' More than many riders in the peloton, Mohorič knows the stakes of descending. In 2023, his Bahrain Victorious teammate Gino Mader died after a high-speed crash at the Tour de Suisse. Did that experience, or his own crash in the 2021 Giro d'Italia, change his relationship with the discipline? 'Not at all actually,' he says. 'But I have huge respect for it, especially with the speed. To be honest, I don't really enjoy the descents with lots of speed, because the consequences can be really bad without any gear or protection which you wouldn't use in races. The higher the speed, the less risk I would take.' Like nutrition, equipment, and tactics, in recent years, descending has changed along with the rest of cycling. Bike computers are one major change, but many of the peloton don't like using them when going downhill. 'For me, it's much safer not to look on the map or study in advance,' says Mohorič. 'OK, maybe if I'm really on it and want to do everything perfectly, then I would look at VeloViewer the night before to see if there were any particular corners where I needed to take care. Ones where you think you can see the apex and the exit, but then they close and get tighter once more. 'I think I'm fastest when I just stay in the moment, looking as far up the road as I can — using the normal technique of spotting the apex and committing. Then, once I can see the exit, I can let go of all the brakes and start to reaccelerate. I think this is safest too — if you're always looking down at your Garmin, you might have a lapse of focus, you might miss your braking point, or a road you thought was straight might actually end up having a kink. That can all be really dangerous.' Advertisement Romain Bardet once said that he felt more unsafe riding the roads he knew well, a sentiment that Saiz agrees with. 'When you know it like the back of your hand, the problem then is that you'll be thinking more than you need to,' he explains. 'You need to be a bit like an Alpine skier. They don't think, they just look at the post, boom! Look at the post, boom! One by one.' Another element is the bicycle itself. Cyclists will do anything to find grip — Nibali used to always ensure his tires were pre-used, scrubbing away the slippier outer layer, but found the shift from rim brakes to disc brakes to be challenging. Feeling is everything — and it all but changed overnight. 'It's important to have the sensation through your hands, your body, because it allows you to feel the asphalt,' says Nibali. 'Where it's slippier, where there's more grip. With rim brakes, I could feel slightly more — the disc brakes filter much more of sensation of the asphalt. The bike now is much faster, because they have more grip, but they are trickier too.' 'You know, these modern bikes are actually very difficult to actually ride, descending or cornering, because of the geometry and how they're built,' agrees Saiz. 'First they changed the weight, then the stability, then the aerodynamics. I've never seen a bike which advertises itself as helping you with handling. That's not a slogan that sells. But there are some that say they can make you 10kph quicker. So many of them aren't forgiving. If you make a mistake, you're probably going to have consequences.' For many, cycling's relationship with descending is too fast and too loose. They point to downhill finishes, in which riders hoping to win the race are incentivized to take risks in exchange for their safety. 'I think they should take them (downhill finishes) away,' Matteo Jorgenson said ahead of the 2023 Tour. 'We saw what happened a few weeks ago on one (when Mader died). It's a part of cycling, but one life lost is too much. Advertisement 'We're all willing to take risks to win the race. If the route is planned that way, it puts us all in a bit of danger. We're bike racers, and when you put a finish line at the bottom, we're going to go as fast as we possibly can. I would prefer to finish on top of the climb.' His comments were echoed by many in the peloton. Mohorič has both won on these downhill finishes and experienced loss from their risks. He believes that as long as the course is designed carefully, the inherent risk can be minimized, even if it will never disappear completely. 'I still think downhill finishes have their place in cycling,' he says. 'I don't think it should be done every day, but it would also be a little bit boring if every day was a mountain-top finish. The same guys would end up winning, no? 'I know it must be frustrating for some guys that are strong to then struggle with the descents or positioning, but there's more to cycling than just watts per kilo. I think cycling is beautiful and nice to watch because it has a bit of everything.'
