Upon reading about the news of Javier Otxoa’s death at age 43 after a long illness, I recalled this piece I wrote back in 2002. I was an editorial intern at VeloNews; it was the first piece I ever had published in the magazine.
I was working in a somewhat sterile office building for a struggling Bay Area dot-com when the news first reached me that Kelme’s Ricardo Otxoa had been killed and his twin brother Javier critically injured while on a training ride in southern Spain.
On that day last February, like every other day, I had been discreetly checking my favorite cycling websites when I read the news. A Volvo had run down the two brothers on a straight stretch of road; the driver had simply fallen asleep at the wheel. Sitting silently at my desk thousands of kilometers away, I choked on the information. As a daily bike commuter on the dodgy streets of San Francisco, this grim reality struck a nerve. As a follower of professional cycling, I found the tragedy hard to absorb.
During the summer of 2000, I was in southern France on the day of Javier Otxoa’s heroic stage 10 climb of the Hautacam. I wasn’t close enough to attend— I would wait for Ventoux and the Alps— but in close enough proximity to sit under the same rain clouds and watch the events unfold on French television.
That climb in the Pyrenees has since become part of Tour lore: the day Lance Armstrong flew away from Marco Pantani, took the yellow jersey and put his definitive stamp on the race. However, for those watching it live, even those Americans who had crossed the Atlantic to encourage Armstrong, it was impossible not to cheer for the wiry Spaniard who had dared a solo ascent in the torrential wind and rain, and yet was so dangerously close to being drawn in by the hard-charging American.
Otxoa held tough during the final kilometers, his 11-minute lead reduced to 42 seconds, and those images of him — struggling, and winning the stage in front of passionate Spanish fans — remain as memorable as from any modern Tour. It was his first professional win, and in a post-race interview, he would go on to say, “Me he muerto encima de la bicicleta,” essentially saying, “I have died upon the bicycle.”
Seven months later, Javier Otxoa lay in a coma with injuries to his head and shoulders, with broken arms and legs, unconsciously fighting for his life. He would remain in the coma for several weeks, weeks that offered no certainties of survival. At first it was believed he would be without full mental capabilities, and there were doubts as to if he would ever walk again.
I was sitting in that same office chair when I read that he had regained consciousness—had fought his way back from the brink of death—and that his first questions were about his twin brother. He was told Ricardo was in rehabilitation for his injuries, but Javier knew otherwise. “Lies,” he would say, and then refuse to speak of cycling at all.
At the age of 26, Ricardo Otxoa died in an emergency vehicle, en route to a Malaga hospital, and was buried in his native Basque homeland. He had been looking forward to his finest season as a professional, set on starting the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España in 2001.
The brothers had begun their cycling careers together at the Spanish team ONCE, but would later be split when Javier moved to Kelme. Ricardo was without a team for 1999, but was eventually picked up by Kelme shortly after they signed Javier. Kelme’s team director Vicente Belda was quoted as saying, “They don’t race as well, when they are not together.” In fact, Javier received several offers after his impressive 13th place at the 2000 Tour, but chose to stay with his brother at Kelme.
The images of a grief-stricken Kelme team carrying Ricardo’s coffin out of a Berango church marked a very heartfelt contrast to those from the 2000 Tour, where Santiago Botero had been resplendent in the King of the Mountains jersey, while Kelme’s star climbers Roberto Heras and Fernando Escartin had stood in lime-green glory atop the podium as winners of the Team Classification.
I had been there that day in Paris, dancing and clapping with a crowd of Spanish cycling fans. And though I try to make sense of these types of events in life, when I received the news of their tragedy it felt like a blow to the gut, as if the part of me that had shared in Javier’s joy had been reduced to ash.
During my training rides last spring, I found myself riding stronger than usual. Most often I would ride alone, allowing myself daydream fantasies. The Santa Cruz Mountains would transform into the Pyrenees, and once again I was off the pack on another solo breakaway, my imaginary radio wet and not working, with Armstrong back there somewhere, breathing down my neck.
In moments of delirium I could almost see my name painted across the coastal stretches of the Pacific Highway. Yet, as strong as I felt, I found myself more tentative when riding on busy roads. Descriptions of the Otxoas’ accident would haunt me in tense traffic situations, and it felt as if was carrying a burden that would have to be worked out in my mind, on my bike.
At the Sea Otter Classic road race in March, I felt ready. At the start I noticed a rider outfitted in a full Kelme jersey and bibs, on an otherwise unremarkable bike. I wasn’t close enough get a good look at him, and once the race began I lost him in the depths of the pack. The pace was fast, and on the first steep climb I was rudely spit out the back. Stunned, I tried not to panic, when out of thin air the rider in the Kelme suit began to silently, and effortlessly, pull me back to the group. He looked familiar, and I asked him in jest if he rode for Kelme, but he said nothing. I waited, and then asked him again, and in Spanish, and again he said nothing. Curiously, I thanked him and rejoined the pack, only to later wish for his help when I was dropped off the back again.
Since that race, I have seen that same individual in the Kelme outfit on a plain black bike. For a while I thought he must live near me in San Francisco, as I would occasionally spot him through the fog on the Golden Gate Bridge. On one occasion, I saw him climbing high above me on Mount Tam. He was also riding alone, and I was sure he saw me accelerating up to him. Naturally, the race was on— or at least in my mind. I have never wanted to chase somebody down so badly in my entire life, or failed so miserably. I rode as hard as I could until my eyes began to roll backwards, and my consciousness seemed to slip away, when suddenly, and silently, appeared the vision in Kelme green, carrying me up the climb.
As I write this, one year and a thousand miles from the empty office building of a failed dot-com, Javier Otxoa is on his feet again. In an emotional public appearance eight months after the tragedy, Otxoa walked slowly to a podium with the help of his brother Andoni and described his three-hour rehabilitation sessions in Bilbao.
“I feel better all the time,” he said. “It’s a long, slow process, but I’m prepared to give everything I have.” He did not comment on the accident or the death of his twin, but he would go on to remark, “It seems unbelievable that people still think of me.”
In fact, many Spanish riders would pay respect to the fallen Otxoa brothers last season, including world champion Oscar Freire, who admirably gave his rainbow jersey to Javier at a late-season criterium in Ibiza. When Colombian Felix Cardenas won the Pyrenean stage into Ax-Les-Thermes at last year’s Tour de France, the Kelme climber dedicated his win to the brothers, saying of Javier, “The team obviously misses him. We’ve worked so hard to make up for his absence.”
Perhaps, in some light, that absence has brought something back into cycling, a parallel spirit reborn stronger than anyone may truly understand.