Dalla newsletter “Derailleur” di Kate Wagner’s :
On Gino Mäder
The first thing you must know about Gino Mäder is that he had unbelievable charisma. He had an air about him that drew everyone in. He had deep, understanding eyes and a rather serious visage mediated by an afro-like shock of curly brown hair that, when I met him for the first time in August of 2021, he had shaved off. The first thing I ever said to Gino Mäder was, “Gino, where’s your hair?” He laughed and said, “I had to do something to help with the heat.”
“Did it help?”
“No,” he joked. After this conversation we spoke every day of that fateful Vuelta, from which Gino Mäder emerged in the white jersey, taking a bow on the podium in Santiago de Compostela. And up until now, we kept in touch, one on one. Of all the cyclists I’ve worked with, he was the one I was by far the closest to. His sudden passing on the same hills from which he was born has left the entire cycling world in shock and pain. Even as I write this I’m not sure what to say.
Gino was a showman, on and off the bike. He had an amazing way of speaking, slow, measured, and theatrical. He was capable of well-timed wryness, but also of deep and total feeling. He was a great storyteller and did amazing impressions of his teammates — who, in his stories, were brought to life in new ways. He wore his heart on his sleeve and it was a big heart, probably too big for cycling. He loved his girlfriend and his dog Pello, a stray found on the streets of Bilbao, and as a result, Gino named Pello after his teammate Pello Bilbao. Gino often teared up when he talked about Pello (the dog) — about how he earned the trust of this cast away animal and in response was met with profound love and loyalty. “He’s just such a good dog, you know?” Gino said, over and over again.
Gino was so viscerally, and often achingly alive. He said of cycling: “When you do something with joy, it shows. The quality is so much higher.” It four in the morning in Europe. It is still impossible to accept that he is gone.
Gino Mäder was born in Flawil, a small village in the east of Switzerland to a family of cyclists. He started cycling in his early teens because his parents were cyclists. His father once wanted to become a professional. He was part of a generation of Swiss cyclists that hadn’t been seen since Cancellara. He was phenomenally talented. He won a stage in the Giro. He won the white jersey in the Vuelta. But he told me that by far his favorite win of his career was in the Tour de Suisse where he was surrounded by the people who loved him. Gino loved Switzerland enormously. He called it, rightly, the most beautiful place in the world. But for him, it was also changing one. He spoke often and with great pain about the disappearance of the glaciers he remembered from his youth, about the joy mixed with a creeping sense of horror gleaned from riding the roads of a landscape changing at an alarming pace.
Like so many of us from our generation, Gino struggled with his place in the world. He struggled with his place in cycling. Even though he loved cycling, he told me in a rest day interview that there was just “so much more than cycling, so many more important things.” He wondered openly if he was wasting his life being a sportsman, if he was being selfish. He used that word. Gino’s world was so much bigger than the small one he’d wound up in.
What struck me the most, however, was that in the world of sports which is inherently bound to ideas of superiority and natural talent, Gino had a powerful distaste for inequality. His life was shaped tremendously by his time riding for Qhubeka-Assos and the charity work done by Qhubeka.
“When you are there at the handover of Qhubeka bikes,” he told me at that same Vuelta, “and you see the joy in children's eyes one day when they receive a simple bike and yet, seven days ago, you got your new race bikes for free with all the best materials, all the fancy carbon stuff. And you're like, hm that's a bit heavy, isn't it? But then you see the joy of a kid who saves an hour every day to go to school and back home and you're like, that's real. That's dedication, that's quality, that's life quality, and you [realize] in comparison, the arrogance. It really changed something in myself as well, gave a purpose to being famous.”
“And why, why should you be famous? You know?” he said with indignation. “There's no reason to be famous. There's no good coming from being famous, except well, you can maybe change the world.”
As early as 2021, Gino considered leaving the sport to work in environmental advocacy. In real time, I watched him weigh that choice with his newfound influence, which he immediately wanted to put towards something bigger than himself. That Vuelta, he raised money for JustDiggit, a charity devoted to rewilding Africa, a place he had gotten to know quite well through his Qhubeka years. Beyond charity, Gino struggled also with the ethical quandaries of a cycling sponsored by bodies who actively harmed the very same earth. He told me, of his work with the environment, “It helps me to cope with it and feel a bit more – in German we say 'im Reinen', which translates to being in the clean with yourself."
I think if I had one word to describe Gino Mäder, it would be brave. He was just so ****ing brave. On the bike, he had panache. He punched way above his weight and took on giants, walking away looking the better man. Everything he ever won he won elegantly, and then, in the exit interview, he would laugh and on the podium he would take a bow. He promised a show and delivered one. He said what he meant, which is a rare quality in human beings. He was brave and brilliant and definitively on the right side of history. He could have been anything. We were lucky to have him in our little world, as a cyclist and as a phenomenal human being.
My entire heart goes out to his loved ones, his family, and anyone who had the profound gift of knowing him. I am so thankful I got to know him too.
