Alex Zanardi, who won Paralympic gold medals after his legendary auto racing career ended with the loss of his legs in a crash, is in a medically induced coma after suffering severe head injuries in a cycling crash last week in Italy.
Zanardi lost control of his handbike as he competed in the Obiettivo Tricolore relay race Friday in Tuscany. Reports indicated that the four-time gold medalist from Bologna crossed the pavement’s white line into the path of a truck that could not avoid him. He was airlifted to Siena’s Santa Maria alle Scotte hospital and underwent three hours of emergency surgery for facial and cranial injuries, with his doctor calling his condition “serious but stable.”
“He arrived here with major facial cranial trauma, a smashed face and a deeply fractured frontal bone [forehead],” Giuseppe Olivieri, the head of neurosurgery at the hospital, told the Associated Press on Saturday. “The numbers are good, although it remains a very serious situation. We won’t see what his neurological state is until he wakes up — if he wakes up. Serious condition means it’s a situation when someone could die. Improvement takes time in these cases.”
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On Sunday, the hospital said in a statement that he is “always sedated, intubated and mechanically ventilated. The ongoing neuromonitoring has shown some stability, but this figure must be taken with caution because the neurological picture remains serious. The current conditions of general stability still do not allow us to exclude the possibility of adverse events and, therefore, the patient always remains in a reserved prognosis.”
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte tweeted, “All of Italy is fighting with you.”
Zanardi, 53, raced for Formula One teams before winning CART series championships in the United States in 1997 and 1998. He returned to F1 in 1999, then came back to CART. Both of his legs were amputated after a 2001 crash in Germany, and he returned two years later to drive for BMW in the European Touring Car Championship.
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He gained more fame as a handbike competitor, winning multiple medals at the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics and world championships. Zanardi, who also competed in Ironman triathlons, was training for the Tokyo Paralympics. He also has driven BMWs equipped with hand controls in endurance races.
“I am so anxious and frightened about Alex Zanardi that I’m holding my breath,” Mario Andretti tweeted. “I am his fan. I am his friend. Please do what I’m doing and pray, pray for this wonderful man.”
Zanardi’s former Williams Racing team called him “one of life’s truly inspiration[al] people and, as we all know, a fighter through and through.”
“I always felt I was a driver, never stopped thinking like one,” Zanardi told the Guardian in 2003. “I knew my professional career had come to an end the day I woke up in hospital after the accident, but I haven’t lost my passion for the sport. And I don’t believe I’ve lost my talent, either.”
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However, his intent went beyond becoming an inspirational figure.
“Some people think what I’m doing is something great or fantastic,” he said in 2003. “The way I see it, I’m just someone who has found himself in a bit of trouble making the best of what he’s got.”
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