Imola, 30 April 2024 – “Senna Tambourine. Two words in the radio system”. May 1, 1994, 2.17 pmEnzo and Dino Ferrari racetrack in Imola: the dimension of time, for Giovanni Gordini – at the time the 118 doctor in charge of the rescue, now director of the emergency department of the Bologna Local Health Authority – is compressed into an infinity made of asphalt, blood, the noise of helicopter blades. Two words in the radio system: time stretches until today, 30 years after the death of Ayrton Senna.
Doctor Gordini, you are the doctor who, together with others, helped Senna and tried to save him. What do you remember?
“I followed the overall coordination, the service on the track was the responsibility of the racetrack managers. A monitor system followed the race. Mauro Sacchetti, the historic coordinator of 118 who unfortunately no longer exists, saw the accident. And he said those two words.”
Then what happened?
“There had already been an accident, so I went close to the stands: after the first start, there was a stop, then the second start. I had a vespino and, moving outside the circuit, I managed to enter the nets shortly later at the Tamburello”.
It was there that he saw Ayrton. In the cockpit?.
“Colleagues were already starting treatment. Sid Watkins, the FIA’s chief doctor, was there: you could hear Senna breathing on his own.”
Was he alive?
“He was alive and the procedures to stabilize him had not yet been completed. Since we had a helicopter around, we agreed with Watkins to land him nearby.”
An unprecedented scenario.
“It was the first and last Grand Prix in which the helicopter responded to an accident and took the patient directly to the reference hospital: in all other cases, the patients were taken to the circuit hospital.”
Then he got into the helicopter.
“Me, other colleagues and Senna. We performed a mini tracheotomy while we put him on the helicopter, then Ayrton was taken to the Maggiore hospital in Bologna.”
A rescue operation that the world followed live, with bated breath.
“It was symbolic, emblematic of the fact that 118 and the regional trauma system could respond to anyone who had an accident: whether it was Senna, the most famous driver in the world, at the Imola racetrack; or whether it was Senna, an ‘unknown’ on the Via Emilia on the way to the restaurant. That help made it clear that the professionalism and timeliness, the dedication and the treatment were the same for everyone.”
And the flight?
“The operation was compressed in time: the patient was very serious. Meanwhile, everyone at the hospital was informed and the head physician Maria Teresa Fiandri was coordinating”.
The situation was irrecoverable.
“The CT scan was devastating. Devastating.”
Meaning what?
“We immediately saw everything that was dramatic, including the damage done by the suspension arm, the fracture of the skull base, where the skull articulates with the neck. Hemorrhages arose from there. Devastating.”
Then the transition to intensive care.
“We tried everything. But after a while we saw that the encephalogram was flat. It was the documentation of brain death: it was incontrovertible. Unfortunately. Poor guy, Ayrton.”
Gerhard Berger, another Formula 1 driver, arrived on the eleventh floor of the Maggiore.
“Who had been our patient some time before. There was an aseptic silence, as happens in intensive care. Berger asked to see Ayrton. He knew what he would see. He saw a friend die.”
And you, Doctor Gordini, have you ever returned to Tamburello?
“I followed other rescue operations in Imola. But never at Tamburello”.
What remains of that ‘photo’ from 30 years ago?
“It was one of the first such serious accidents reported live. In some way it was didactic, he managed to explain in such a dramatic situation how to work in rescue operations. There was nothing extraordinary. Only the work of the professionals, the ABC of simple maneuvers to implement in sequence. We stabilized the vital functions to a minimum. From Tamburello there was no possibility of return for Ayrton.
Three ministers at the ceremony
Exhibitions, theatrical performances and a racetrack open to the public all day. This is how Imola will remember Ayrton Senna tomorrow, 30 years after his death. At 2.17 pm commemoration at the Tamburello curve in the presence of the Foreign Ministers of Italy and Brazil (but their Austrian counterpart will also be there, so as not to forget Roland Ratzenberger who also died in Imola on 30 April 1994) and of the driver Bruno Senna, Ayrton’s nephew, son of his sister Viviane.
