From Pro Cycling
In years to come it will make a fine quiz question: Which
professional cyclist was fined, not for refusal to wear a
helmet, not for getting caught on a speed camera, not for
non-regulation bib shorts - but for failure to fit his race
bike with a .safety bell? For once the answer is not serial
non-conformist Mario Cipollini.
Until the first week of April Fassa Bortolo's Guido Trenti
was looking forward to confirming his status as provider of
peloton's best escort service to top sprinters at the Giro
d'Italia. Trenti is in fact best known as the last man in
Alessandro Petacchi's sprint "train". Fate, though, was
about to intervene in the unlikely form of a Renault Espace:
training in Asolo, near his home in north-east Italy, the
31-year-old Trenti collided with the vehicle and saw all
hopes of chaperoning Petacchi to Giro glory end in an
emergency ward along with fractures to his pelvis, jaw,
tibia and elbow. For days after the accident it was not only
Trenti's season which looked in jeopardy, but perhaps also
his career.
But the punchline was about to arrive. And it was the
ultimate in poor taste and poor timing. Arriving on the
scene, local traffic policemen inspected Trenti's mangled
Pinarello bike and shook their heads disapprovingly. No
bell. That'll be 39 euros, 'per favore'.
"I can't complain," Trenti, whose wired jaw made him unable
to speak until two days ago, reflected. "I looked up the
Italian traffic laws on the internet and they were perfectly
entitled to fine me. The problem is that road bikes in Italy
don't tend to come with bells."
After admitting that team manager Giancarlo Ferretti was
unlikely to fit the bill for his faux pas, Trenti told
procycling that he is now hopeful of making a full recovery.
For the moment, though, he remains bed-bound:
"My pelvis and tibia are still fractured, but fortunately
they're not compound fractures, unlike my elbow," said
Trenti, who is qualified to ride for the US national team by
virtue of his Boston-born mother. "I've had an operation on
the elbow and it was a success," he continued. "The other
bones will take around 60 days to heal and after that I can
start thinking about rehabilitation. I wouldn't like to
speculate as to when I might ride again, but my dream is the
Verona worlds later this year.
"...In the meantime, unfortunately, I'll be watching
Petacchi's sprints on television."
In an extensive preview of the Giro d'Italia in the June
issue of procycling, Trenti and another crack lead-out man,
Mario Scirea, provide a unique, domestique's eye-view of the
Cipollini-Petacchi sprint wars. Sadly neither reveals
whether a bell is part of Cipo's standard battle gear...
Jan