Farewell to Alex Zanardi, Dr. Costa’s touching remembrance
The news of Alex Zanardi’s passing at 59 years of age has transversally affected all people linked to the world of motors, the first sporting love of the Bologna-born champion. Among the many memories expressed immediately, especially via social media, that of Dr. Claudio Costa, the famous founder of Clinica Mobile and, above all, a longtime friend of Zanardi himself, is striking.
“Alessandro Zanardi has left this earthly world to go racing in the prairies of heaven. Atrocious, heartbreaking news like that of Ayrton Senna on May 1, 1994,” Dr. Costa wrote on his Instagram profile. Alessandro reminds me of the great poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi’s poem ‘The Broom’: the flower that spreads perfume through fragrant thickets before the incandescent lava of Vesuvius destroyer incinerates it.”
“In fact, in 2001, he suffered a terrible accident that made the whole world shudder. He arrived at the hospital with less than a liter of blood, in very serious medical condition for which Nasa’s textbooks gave him no chance but after 17 surgeries and 7 cardiac arrests Alexander said to the death he was playing with in the chessboard of life, ‘This time I won’ and Nasa had to rewrite the terms of his books.”
“From the rubble of Berlin, Alessandro rose up to amaze the whole world by standing in front of the audience at the Bologna MotorShow just three months after the accident, marveling everyone present. And he did it with his usual irony, with a quip, ‘For the emotion my legs are shaking,’ leaving all the onlookers and Michael Schumacher also awarded that day with Autosprint’s Golden Helmets, stunned. Standing on the stage smiling while everyone wept he had checkmated death by forgetting the half of his body that had been stolen in a diabolical way in Berlin.”
“In a very short time he returned to his family affections with his sweet wife Daniela and son Niccolò, got into karts and drove motorcycles, returned to the snow to ski and to the much-loved sea to swim. Surprising everyone he returned to racing first by completing the Berlin race that the terrible accident had cut short atrociously with times that would have earned him the front row, and in 2006 in Valencia he entered the F1 cockpit setting lap times similar to those of the champion Vettel. His skill and ingenuity modified the Gran Turismo car so that he could drive it and stand on the steps of the world championship podium.”
“Driven by an inexhaustible curiosity and desire for the new, he began history with handbiking winning many world championships and when the Paralympics gold medals were placed around his neck in London he shouted ‘I am a happy man,’ and playing on the chessboard of life he forgot the nothingness of the endgame. Today the inescapable victor reminded him of that. At these junctures of life I should say that I am torn with grief but Alexander, who with his friendship and sensitivity had redrawn the boundaries of my soul not only as a doctor but as a man, had given me the tools to be able to bear it: the dream that out of tragedy comes beauty.”
