If there is one image that perhaps best sums up the career of Gino Mäder, it could be the moment when he stepped up to receive his final best young rider’s jersey in the 2021 Vuelta a España and, presumably grinning from ear to ear behind his facemask, he playfully made a deep bow to the crowd.
It wasn’t that Mäder, who died on June 16 from the injuries sustained a terrible crash in the Tour de Suisse, was unaware of what he’d just achieved in the Vuelta, given how hard he’d fought for his first Grand Tour classification title. His triumph in the competition came ahead of no less a challenger than Egan Bernal and at the end of a horrendously-tough third week of the Vuelta.
But apart from a fine sense of humour, that bow to the Spanish public in front of Santiago de Compostela cathedral also revealed a sharp sense of perspective and of the world beyond cycling – the latter all too uncommon in sport, where self-centredness and shutting out the bigger picture is often seen as a pathway to success.
Indeed, quite apart from the white jersey, Mäder’s pride in his Vuelta performance also was due to his raising a hefty amount of money for an African re-greening charity, Just Diggit, by donating one Euro for every rider he finished ahead of on each stage.
“That’s pretty cheap for each rider. But I hope it’s going to be a good sum by the end of the Vuelta,” Mäder told Cyclingnews midway through the race, when his adopted cause, decided by popular vote (or likes), was already 1,000 Euros to the good.
Mäder’s interest in African causes was born after he turned pro with Dimension Data in 2019, a team with a long history of working with projects designed to help bring bikes to economically struggling townships in South Africa.
But his interest in questions and causes greater than himself went from helping people on the other side of the world to direct local action, like adopting a stray dog from the streets of Bilbao, naming the dog Pello after his teammate in Bahrain Victorious.
That strongly-developed awareness of others was present again when he took his first and only Grand Tour stage win at the 2021 Giro d’Italia. Mäder had some key unfinished business that day – after losing a Paris-Nice stage earlier that year to Primož Roglič by the bare minimum, he was determined to fend off the fast-closing peloton this time. But he insisted all the same on dedicating his hilltop victory to teammate Mikel Landa, badly injured and forced to…
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