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Mario Cipollini undergoes operation after collision with car

Former world champ-turned-bike maker faces 60-day recovery during trade show season

Former world champion Mario Cipollini has been admitted to hospital this afternoon after a collision with a car while he was training in Lucca.

According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Cipollini required an operation to his left knee after a driver making a turn failed to see him. In the ensuing collision, Cipollini's left knee hit the car's rear light.

Cipollini previously sustained an injury to the same area in a skiing accident. This time he was operated on immediately, but just before going under the knife, the 47-year-old was gloomy about the coming recovery.

"It's bad," he said. "At least 60 days [to recover].

"Aside from the pain, I know that these injuries need a long and arduous rehabilitation. I'll be on crutches and all that for more than 60 days before I return to normal life."

Since retiring in 2005, Cipollini has founded a bike manufacturer under his name and with the Eurobike and Interbike trade shows imminent, this crash could hardly come at a worse time. It will make it hard, he said, to present his bike range at all the shows.

The most powerful road sprinter of his era, Cipollini won 191 races between 1989 and 2005 and is credited with inventing the lead-out train tactic now used by most top sprinters.

He won a record 42 stages in the Tour of Italy, and 12 stages of the Tour de France. However, he never finished the Tour de France and his habit of dropping out before the race reached the mountains led organisers to stop inviting his team, even when he was reigning world champion.

He was famous for flamboyant skinsuits, including the famous muscle suit he wore for the prologue of the 2001 Tour of Italy. He was fined by the UCI for wearing non-regulation clothing, but the suit later sold for in excess of $40,000 at a charity auction.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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notfastenough | 10 years ago
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Cars don't left-hook (or right-hook, given it's on the continent) Supermario, they are merely impaled on his adonis-like limbs as he powers past them. He actually retired from pro racing to find some decent opposition by racing against cars.

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s_lim | 10 years ago
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This was on the cyclingnews comments (apologies for the source, but it's too good not to share; I had to wade through a lot of trolling to get it);

"[After being turned sideways from entering his vortex] a car [veered] off the road in front of Cipollini. [Prior to the impact, the motorist was stunned by the good looking man bearing down upon him. Frozen in awe, the vehicle was unable to be turned out of the path of the most gregarious sprinter of all time] and he hit the rear of the car with his knee, [thereby rendering it totalled.] Cipollini is now being treated for his wounds and his personal tailor is at his bedside preparing a new suit that will present the bandages with more flair. There's a 24 hour podium girl watch outside his door...just in case."

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Leviathan | 10 years ago
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The Lion Sleeps Tonight

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