"Doug" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:<
[email protected]>...
> Do you mind providing a source, or is this just innuendo, or something some "friend" heard from a
> "friend" and so on?
>
...this is well known incident to anybody who follows professional cycling. Well since this is a
real horror story and Halloween is just around the corner, on this occasion I will provide you with
some more information but if you want more you can do your own followup. Here's the article...
------------------
You may have heard of Michele Bartoli the 1998 winner of the Cycling World Cup well he had a little
accident this year which ruined not only his 1999 season read on..
Bartoli's Accident...A Real Horror Story For Halloween We've all been waiting for Michele Bartoli to
recover from his freak accident of early June and return to cycling, no one is more ready to ride
than the former World's number one of Mapei. However, the most recent word is that Bartoli will have
to tap into reserves of patience that he didn't know he possessed, after having the screws and
hardware removed from the knee on October 13th he experienced a strange clicking from the injured
joint the first time he went riding. Not much was ever said about the accident that occurred during
the Tour of Germany, a crash that is threatening his career, but Cyclegossip has heard some of the
inside story and it's enough to make one queasy.
The papers reported that Bartoli had fallen heavily at slow speeds and broken his knee cap, what in
fact happened was that in crashing, Michele's leg went into the wheel (the brand of which we must
leave up to your informed imaginations) of a team mate and it literally sliced through his knee cap
severing bone and tendons. When he went to stand up his femur, no longer properly anchored to the
knee, slid out through the wound. Bartoli at that point almost fainted. This was recounted to us by
a team mate who was at his side during the episode. It's been kept quiet by the team evidently to
appease the maker of the wheels. After the latest complications Bartoli went to the clinic of a
specialist in Como, Italy where Dr. Luigi Simonetto found that despite the excellent work of the
German surgeons there is a noticeable thickening of the tendons severed in the accident which are
preventing the joint from functioning properly. His opinion is that Bartoli will have to observe
several more weeks of rest before resuming cycling.
The Italian champion, discouraged by the set back, said in the Gazzetta dello Sport, "I'm not making
any more plans or programs, I don't want to set myself up for these disappointments, until my knee
is 100% healed I'm playing it safe. The desire to ride is enormous, it's consuming me but I'm also
getting tired of these frustrations. If I can't come back for the first part of the season like I
planned it means that I'll be competitive for the second part, for the Tour and the World's. I'm
convinced that all this will pay off in the end, I'm determined to make it back to my former level".
He's trying to be philosophical about his comeback, realizing that it makes no sense to rush things
when he has four or five good seasons left in which to regain his former position as one of the best
in the peloton.
