A Vuelta Tribute to Xavier Tondo – Cycling News
Xavier Tondo was a Spanish professional road racing cyclist and he was known for his enormous performances during the mountain stages of the race as he finished 6th overall during the Vuelta a Espana 2010.
Exactly three months from today Tondo was found dead as his body was trapped between his own car and the automatic garage door and appears as if he was preparing his bicycle for the training with Benat Intxausti Elorriaga who was his friend and also a team-mate.
Team Movistar announced the funeral of the cyclist on May 25, 2011 while his relatives, friends and all the close acquaintances paid their tributes to the cyclist. Alberto Contador paid his tribute to the cyclist through Twitter as he wrote, “Life is so
unjust and difficult to understand at certain moments, it’s impossible to describe my feelings on the death of Xavi Tondo, my most sincere condolences to his family. He was an incredible person who loved this sport like nobody else.”
Giro d’ Italia organisers announced right after the death of Spaniard to observe 1 minute silence in the memory of the cyclist.
His death still remains a mystery as a famous cycling website wrote about the cyclist’s death, “The Spaniard was killed on Monday when he became trapped between his car and a garage door at resort in Grenada, severing his Carotid artery.”
Stage 5 of Vuelta a Espana 2011 is finishing few metres from where Tondo died, Benat stated that memories of his beloved friend are still with him and today’s stage is going to be really tough as all the memories will come in front of him as he lost his
friend on the same track while preparing for the Vuelta.
Benat further added that they never used to go training on car and it was only the first day when they went on car and had to face such a big incident. Stage 2 winner of the Vuelta a Espana Pablo Lastras Garcia paid his tribute to Xavier as he dedicated
his success while he looked at the skies and crossed a line with his finger after winning the stage.
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