He spoke for the first time recounting all his pain. Francoise Antonini, second wife of Davide Rebellin, chose the weekly «Oggi» to tell the life of her husband, killed last November 30 by a truck driver who hit him while he was training in the Vicenza area. “They tore me to pieces inside, before killing him,” says the French widow of the longest-lived cyclist in history.
The persistence
In addition to explaining their love (“We met every day by bike. Then one day, I was returning, he turned around, went back and asked me what my name was”), the woman said: “Since the ‘I have known, there have always been problems, lawsuits, lawyers. Everything was unfair, and I emphasize unfair (the doping charge was dropped with a full acquittal after seven years in court, but the silver medal won at the Beijing Olympic Games was not returned, ed.). All this fury was too much. Davide never got angry, he didn’t raise his voice, he kept everything inside, he didn’t say anything, even to protect me. I only saw him once with tears in his eyes, but then he had the usual reaction, he took off and went pedaling … ».
The further you go, the more you work
Then the woman revealed how the cyclist from Vicenza always trained except on Christmas day when he was with his family while in the rest of the year he pedaled even six or seven hours a day because he was convinced that «The more one goes on with age, the more you work”. According to Rebellin’s widow, he also cycled in his sleep when he tossed and panted: upon waking he said he dreamed of victories in the Northern Classics. Waiting for the autopsy (next December 19th) which once concluded will allow the date of the funeral to be established, the wife also confesses the background on her husband’s economic problems. «To defend yourself you had to pay many lawyers, you lost everything you had and even more because you didn’t make any money. Teams did compete without paying for it. We lived on what we had, he didn’t have a pension, and I didn’t work.’
The last hours
Finally, the Frenchwoman revealed the last hours of the athlete’s life: «The day he left (to return to Italy, since the couple lived in Monaco) I felt he was very worried. But I only found out later her death that he had gone to meet his lawyers, because he had lost the appeal in the case with the Revenue Agency. He had hidden it from me. In 2015 she had won the first grade and we thought it was over but it wasn’t. “You’ll see it will take some time, but we will win, we have proof”, she repeated to me. She had brought witnesses, everyone saw that she lived in Monte Carlo, she couldn’t understand why she had lost. The morning he was run over he had gone to the bank because he was out of money in his account and needed a loan. My husband was treated unjustly to the end, even his death was horrible and unjust.’
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December 15, 2022 (change December 15, 2022 | 16:12)
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