Siena, 17 May 2021 – “It can’t be him, it can’t have happened to Andrea”. Yet it was true: one of the most loved and appreciated jockeys, a person who hardly passed indifferent to the Gascon and irreverent way of doing things, very good on horseback, had died in a car accident. A thousand falls in the square during the Palio, won six times, fractures, a very serious injury and operations. But he had always recovered. This time he didn’t make it.
And Siena is in shock because a son of his is gone. A person who was not just a jockey but a true Sienese. A good person. A professional. Was Andrea Marthe. In Siena first the rumor came that there had been a very serious accident to a jockey. But the car did not return, Andrea Mari, aka Brio, did not have any Porsche. Instead, a close friend had lent it to him. Of those that are always there.
A car – the dynamics will be clarified – with which he lost his life in Bolgheri, against a tree. A tragedy. The world of the Palio – and the whole city – clung to the family, to his wife Ilaria with whom he married in February 2019 even if they knew each other as children. Lacrime nel Bruco, the Contrada to which he was linked. And for which with Schietta, in 2019, he had lost the Palio by a few centimeters, the last course before the pandemic.
Tears also from colleagues because Brio knew how to be loved by everyone. His career is on the rise. Born in Rosia, a hamlet on the outskirts of Siena, in the municipality of Sovicille, on October 13, 1977, he made his debut in Tartuca on August 16, 2001 thanks to captain Carlo Arezzini. Since then he has raced 32 times in the Piazza, winning six Palios. The first in 2006 in the Pantera, with the historic overtaking of his rival Aquila on the last dive, then he removed the ‘cap’ from the Civetta on August 16, 2009, he triumphed on August 16, 2011 in the Giraffa, again in the Civetta on August 16, 2014. Resounding success in the Tower on July 2, 2015, then the last in the Dragon, on July 2, 2018. In Mociano on May 4, he had tears in his eyes when he talked about the possibility of never running because of the pandemic again this year. The Palio was his life. And Andrea was the Palio. Talking about it in the past tense hurts the heart.
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