On June 15, 2023, the unthinkable happened. At the Tour de Suisse, popular local rider Gino Mäder (Bahrain Victorious) plunged off the side of the road on a high-speed descent of the Albula Pass, suffering horrific injuries after landing in a ravine, face down in water. He was airlifted to hospital but died of his injuries the next day, bringing to an end the promising career of one of the peloton’s most principled and beloved riders. Cycling was plunged into mourning, facing another reckoning about the safety of the sport, the risks it places on its practitioners, the sacrifices that they can make.
Forgotten, a little, in the outpouring of grief was the young American rider Magnus Sheffield (Ineos Grenadiers) – the other rider who had crashed off the side of the mountain. Sheffield – himself injured – was lying close to Mäder as the Swiss rider was suspended in the in-between.
“As a result of the crash, I was heavily concussed and experienced a window of what felt like unconsciousness,” Sheffield later wrote. “At that moment when I sat on the mountain side, there were helicopters flying above ringing in my ears while I looked out on one of the most beautiful landscapes, as I saw riders and the race convoy passing down the Albula Pass.” And then a moment of half-clarity in the haze as he realised that he wasn’t alone: “I was confused seeing medical staff around a rider that I could only recognize the team jersey of at the time, because I knew that I had crashed alone.”
Mäder never regained consciousness; Sheffield would spend three months out of competition as he recovered from a concussion and the trauma of the crash. Over the time since, he’s been fortunate enough to work his way back to near the top of the sport. Although he’s in his fourth pro season, he’s still just 22, and his results have been testament to his talent and tenacity; since turning pro Sheffield’s won the youth classification at five minor tours, second at a few more. But after his early breakthrough at the 1.Pro De Brabantse Pijl in 2022, there has been something missing, and that was a WorldTour win.
On the final stage of this year’s Paris-Nice, that changed. On a hilly route around Nice, Lidl-Trek’s Mads Pedersen animated the race to secure the green jersey, acting as a launching pad for Sheffield. The upstate New Yorker hopped from the front of a diminished peloton at 35 km remaining, quickly closed the gap to the leading trio, and from the top of the Col de Quatre Chemins was on his own, descending back to his adopted hometown of Nice.
On the Promenade des Anglais, there was daylight between one American and another – the chasing Matteo Jorgenson – and Sheffield glided over the line with a smile. For a moment there, just after crossing the line, sun and shade dappling his body, Sheffield looked upwards and pointed at the sky.
The post-finish proceedings of a big bike race are a frenzy. It goes something like this: the winner rolls down a tunnel of noise, threading a path through a huge flock of photographers planted a hundred metres or so after the line. From all angles, team helpers and race officials descend: team-uniformed press officers and soigneurs embrace the rider, ASO staffers and security guys try to maintain a semblance of order around them, and photographers and TV crews swirl on the periphery, sticking lenses above and through gaps among arms.
The rider has a few moments to catch his breath and drink or eat something before being whisked away to sit down for the first of several TV interviews, in which he’ll be asked to articulate what this moment means and how he got there. Remarkably, given the aforementioned frenzy, these interviews sometimes reveal more than monosyllabic grunts. Occasionally, as with Magnus Sheffield yesterday, they provide an emotional glimpse of the human under the helmet.
“I’ve been second so many times now; it’s my first victory at the World Tour level,” Sheffield said, reaching a hand up to wipe a tear from his eye. “In cycling it’s just so hard to win any race. It means really so much … the team has always believed in me through the tough times, and the same with my family.” His big blue eyes welled with tears, his voice a little choked, before getting taken up onto the podium for his medal and flowers.
A few moments later, in front of a second cohort of journalists, the emotion was still raw as Sheffield was asked about what the win meant to him. “There’s so many people I want to thank, but the most important person I want to dedicate this win to is Gino Mäder. It’s already two years now since we lost Gino, and although I didn’t know him very well personally I was in that accident in Tour de Suisse with him and I really didn’t know if it was possible to win a race afterwards,” Sheffield said, welling up again before taking a pause for a deep breath.
The memory of Gino Mäder – and the idealistic person that he was – still hangs over the sport. His was the unseen hand pushing teammates Pello Bilbao and Matej Mohorič to stage wins at the 2023 Tour de France; he was the inspiration for a wave of environmentalist initiatives from Bilbao and others to reduce emissions and re-green the planet. For Magnus Sheffield, the rider who was alone with Mäder on the mountainside as he fought for life, a line in his career was drawn: a point after which everything would never be the same.
"The crash reminded me of how fragile life can be," he wrote in the aftermath. "I feel incredibly lucky to be alive, to be able to walk, and even more fortunate to continue racing professionally."
Another line was drawn on his return to the sport in late 2023, and in winning at Paris-Nice, there’s another – a moment of personal triumph, a moment of reflection, and, maybe, a moment of trauma overcome. Or, at least, introspection and understanding. “Cycling is just so hard and you can’t take anything for granted, in life and in cycling,” as Sheffield put it. There’s a message there at the end of a bleak and rainy Paris-Nice, after a bleak and tragic event two years earlier: even when things are dark, the sun shines again.
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