Alex Zanardi and those images after the accident that went around the world: the fans are still moved.
Alex Zanardi lived a life full of satisfactions in the sporting field but also full of pain, suffering, obstacles that for many men would have remained insurmountable. A man of sport, of old-time values. The courage of a lion in facing a real tragedy like the one the former pilot experienced on 15 September 2001.
Cart Championship, Zanardi, during the stage race in Lausitz in Germany, lost control of his car when it was hit by Tagliani’s. The car literally breaks in half. Following that drama, Alex had his lower limbs amputated. A monstrous episode that didn’t bring him down: on the contrary. Zanardi reinvented his career and in just a few years he became a handbike championcapable of collecting four gold medals at the Paralympics in London and Rio de Janeiro, between 2012 and 2016.
On June 19, 2020, life came back to bite him. During training on the streets of Pienza, Tuscany, a truck literally runs over Alex. Miraculously alive, he spent over six months in a coma after an almost infinite series of surgeries to save him: Zanardi returns home in 2021. For three years now very little has been known about him, he lives mostly in the memory of it that he represented for the world of sport. The same world that took so much from him and for which Zanardi he was the protagonist of a truly chilling gesture: the fans, today as then, cannot help but be moved.
Zanardi, chilling gesture: fans moved
After his first accident, which occurred 23 years ago, Alex Zanardi has shown truly extraordinary mettle. Demonstrating this is the choice to return to visit the Cart championship just one year after the Lausitz tragedy. As you can see from the touching images, Alex climbs onto the pedestal to wave the flag yellow on the first lap.
In the second, however, the green one. A visceral love for the world of racing which, a few months after the loss of his lower limbs, saw him again determined and smiling, in his natural habitat. A real event that at the time moved, leaving millions of fans stunned, for his courage and determination in moving forward, despite enormous obstacles that the sight had placed in front of him only a year earlier. Today more than then, chapeau Alex, man of unique values, wonderful sportsman.
