Samuele Privitera's death at the Giro della Valle d'Aosta

At nineteen, thoughts are in the future, the present is a flash, the past has no weight. At nineteen, there are so many things to imagine, to approach, to achieve, and to overcome.

Samuele Privitera was nineteen years old, he imagined his future, he imagined it on a bicycle, because pedaling was what he loved most, what he wanted to do. Samuele Privitera died on the road , during the first stage of the Giro della Valle d'Aosta . He had fallen on a downhill stretch, hitting his head. They quickly helped him, they tried to save him, but there was nothing they could do.

The organizers canceled the second stage, decided to cancel all formal ceremonies for the upcoming stages, and left "teams free to choose whether to continue the race starting with the third stage." The Tour de France observed a minute of silence before the start of the twelfth stage.

Amid the silence at the Grande Boucle and the stalled bikes in the Aosta Valley, there remains dismay, the inability to make sense of it all. Above all, the inconceivableness of what happened. The bewilderment in the face of what cannot truly be understood. Because in recent years we have seen many dangerous passages, many races on roads that can make us shiver . The road where the fall occurred, however, seemed like any other, like thousands we have seen. And this only increases the dismay. It forces us to face what we cannot truly conceive: the impossibility of achieving zero risk.

"Samuele was and always will be the heart and soul of this team. This team has always been a small family, and moments like this are unimaginable. He was irreplaceable. His joy, his spirit, his kindness, were always a bright light in whatever room or race he happened to be in at the time. Losing him is devastating beyond words," Axel Merckx, general manager of Hagens Berman Jayco, the team Samuele rode for, remembered him.

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