Giro d'Italia removes Monte Mottarone from the route map after a cable car accident

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Crashed gondola on Monte Mottarone: Not a place for a sporting event

Photo: ITALIAN FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE / HANDOUT / EPA

At the Giro d'Italia, the racing cyclists around the overall leader Egan Bernal will not ride up Monte Mottarone.

After the fatal cable car accident on the mountain, the race organizers changed the route.

The 19th stage on Friday should lead with a demanding ascent over the Monte Mottarone in the northern Italian region of Piedmont.

However, the race management of the Giro d'Italia announced that they had decided, in agreement with Italy's Minister of Infrastructure Enrico Giovannini and the Piedmont region, to change the route.

The new route is therefore 166 kilometers long.

The start is to take place in Abbiategrasso, west of Milan.

The destination is in Alpe di Mera.

The Monte Mottarone is not climbed.

Previously, Giovannini and the representatives of the regional government of Piedmont asked the organizers to change the route out of respect for the victims of the cable car accident.

Negligent Homicide Investigation

On Sunday, a gondola crashed on Monte Mottarone for an unexplained cause. A total of 14 people, including children, died. Investigations into the cause of the cable car accident are ongoing. Italian media reported that the prosecutor had seen, among other things, the video from a surveillance camera. It can be seen how the gondola was just before the mountain station on Monte Mottarone on Sunday when a rope suddenly broke and the cabin fell downhill. The newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote about it. Several of the 15 passengers were thrown out of the gondola.

The public prosecutor's office in Verbania in the Piedmont region is investigating, among other things, negligent homicide. In the accident on Monte Mottarone, according to initial findings, an emergency brake should not have worked for a previously unexplained cause. 13 people - Italians and an Israeli family - died at the scene of the accident. Two seriously injured children were flown to a clinic in Turin by rescue helicopter. One of the children died that evening. A boy who lost his parents in the accident survived.

The South Tyrolean company Leitner carries out checks at the Funivia Stresa-Mottarone cable car in accordance with a maintenance contract.

According to a message from the company from Monday night, the hydraulic brake system of the vehicles was last serviced on May 3 of this year.

During the last magnetic-inductive rope test in November 2020, "no irregularities" were found.

According to Leitner, the daily and weekly checks are the responsibility of the operating company Ferrovie del Mottarone.

ptz / dpa