Cycling, Rebellin’s wife: ‘Always problems, lawsuits, lawyers, and he kept everything. They killed me inside’

“They tore me to pieces inside, before killing him.” This was revealed by Françoise Antonini, the second French wife of Davide Rebellin, in an exclusive interview with the weekly ‘Oggi’, on newsstands tomorrow. The longest-lived and unfortunate Italian cycling racer, overwhelmed and killed on November 30 by a truck, is remembered by his life partner who tells how he always reacted to adversity in the same way: with silence and the bicycle. He went pedaling, to free himself from the torments that had been pursuing him for over a decade. “Ever since I’ve known him, there have always been problems, lawsuits, lawyers. Everything was unfair, and I stress unfair (the doping charge was dropped with a full acquittal after seven years spent in court, but the silver medal won at the Beijing Olympics was not returned to him, ed). All this fury was too much. Davide never got angry, he didn’t raise his voice, he kept everything inside, he didn’t say anything, even to protect me. Only once did I see him with tears in his eyes, but then he had the usual reaction, he took off and went pedaling … ”.

His wife continues: “He trained every day, apart from Christmas, which was dedicated to us. But for the rest of the year he cycled all day. Six, seven hours and even more, and then the gym. ‘The older you get, the more you need to train’, she told me. In ten years we have never had a weekend or a holiday together, the bike was her life … she also pedaled at night. In bed I could hear him sometimes tossing and panting in his sleep. Then when I woke up he would tell me that she had dreamed of winning the Belgian classics again. It was a recurring dream.”

Appeal The autopsy is scheduled for Monday 19 December, then the date of the funeral will be established. “Davide had gone to Veneto to meet his lawyers, because he had lost the appeal in the case with the Revenue Agency – continues Mrs. Antonini -. He had hidden it from me. In 2015 he had won the first grade and we thought it was over, but it wasn’t. ‘You’ll see it will take some time, but we will win, we have proof’, she repeated to me. He had brought witnesses, everyone saw that he lived in Monte Carlo, he couldn’t understand why he had lost. The morning he was run over, he had gone to the bank because he was out of money in his account and needed a loan. My husband was treated unfairly to the very end, and his death was also horrible and unjust.”