The names 'Gino' and 'Muriel' were painted on the tarmac in Zurich last weekend. As the men’s and women’s elite races flew around the technical city-centre circuit, these markings on the road served as a desperately sad, harrowing reminder of the tragedies that have struck Swiss Cycling and the entire cycling community in the last two years. Two young lives ended too soon.
In the end, Lotte Kopecky and Tadej Pogačar were crowned the elite world champions, but really, the bike racing felt secondary. Eighteen-year-old Muriel Furrer’s death after her crash in the junior women’s race cast a dark shadow. The loss was announced during the under-23 men’s event on Friday with competitors informed after the race just before the podium ceremonies. Medals were given, but national anthems were not played and flags were flown at half mast. Mourning took the place of celebration.
Although the competition continued through the rest of the week, as Elisa Longo-Borghini stated after finishing third in the women’s race: “There was not a rider racing today who was not thinking of Muriel.”
Image: Chris Auld/SWpix.com
Furrer was remembered everywhere in Switzerland last weekend. A minute of silence observed at the start of both elite races saw the Swiss women’s team huddled at the front of the peloton in the rain, tears shed for their team-mate. "We can't talk about results, it's just about going out and showing we are racing for Muriel and I think the result will be secondary today,” Noemi Rüegg choked to reporters. The following day, the entirety of the men’s peloton removed their helmets at the start of their race in Winterthur, grieving the loss of a young woman who died doing what she loved.
Furrer’s fatal crash is perhaps made even harder to process for many due to the questions that surround the incident. Questions about if more could have been done to save her, questions about how there is even the shocking possibility that she wasn’t found for such a long time, in a race that was broadcast on television to millions of people, on a circuit in a busy city.
These were questions that UCI President David Lappartient was unable to answer when he spoke to the press on Saturday. "You don’t ride a bike to die," the Frenchman stated to a silent room full of journalists.
"We don’t know exactly what happened, that’s the job of the police, they are working on it, to figure out the conditions of how the accident happened. I don’t want to make any conclusions on this. The crash happened, we don’t know how, that’s the job of the police, and it’s too early to have any conclusion to say whether it would have been possible to find her earlier with a radio or not."
Image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com
In time, the truth behind what happened to Furrer will – and must – be uncovered so that the sport can do everything possible to stop these tragedies occurring at what is becoming an alarming rate of frequency. Bike racing is inherently dangerous, but if there was anything that could have prevented what happened in the junior women’s race at the Worlds, it needs to be investigated. There is nothing good that could ever come from the death of Muriel Furrer, but the least that the cycling world can do to honour her life is try to take learnings from what happened to her, for the current and future generations of bike racers. The World Championships may have come to a quiet close, but this conversation surrounding rider safety should continue.
“It’s devastating, everyone on the start line today was riding with her in mind,” newly-crowned world champion Pogačar said somberly in his press conference. “We’re just humans. We don’t want anything bad to happen and we need to take care of each other. The cycling world is too small. I wish all the best to Muriel's family and the cycling community around her.”
The Slovenian rider’s words “we’re just humans” rang sharply through the press room in Zurich. Furrer’s passing once again highlights the fragility of bike riders, who we can so often dehumanise as they go on 100-kilometre solo attacks or outsprint their competitors behind sunglasses and helmets. The reality is, however, that they should not be risking their lives to entertain us, or to do the thing that they love. Muriel Furrer was one of Switzerland’s brightest, multi-disciplinary, talented cyclists who deserved to live out her dreams. Ever since she died on Friday, after crashing just kilometres away from her home in Egg, it felt like there was no colour in the rainbows anymore. Her name was written over the roads in Zurich and it will always be irrevocably linked to these World Championships, more important than any rider who won or stood on the podium. May she rest in peace, and may the cycling world never rest in trying to prevent something like this happening again.
