Personal trainer to Italy’s Prime Minister fighting for his life after driver crashes into him

The personal trainer to Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s Prime Minister, is in critical condition in hospital after a driver crashed into him while he was cycling near Rome yesterday.

The crash that has left 44-year-old Fabrizio Iacorossi fighting for his life happened in the coastal resort of Villaggio Tognazzi near Ostia, around 10 kilometres to the south west of the Italian capital.

Local police and Carabinieri personnel rushed to the scene of the crash, with Iacorossi subsequently taken by emergency helicopter to the San Camillo Forlanini Hospital in Rome, reports Today.it.

Officers are now seeking to establish the exact circumstances of the incident.

The driver of the car involved stopped and gave what assistance he could to the cyclist, and subsequently tested negative for alcohol.

Iacorossi’s professional relationship with Meloni emerged after he posted a video of himself with the politician shot outside his gym the day after centre-right parties swept the Italian general election i September 2022, paving the way for the Fratelli d’Italia leader to become Prime Minister.

He also counts former AS Roma and  Italy footballer Francesco Totti among his clients, acting as trainer to his eight-a-side Totti Sporting Club football team, which also offers soccer schools and facilities for sports including Padel from its base in Ostia Antica.

Last year, 197 cyclists were killed on Italy’s roads, 15 of those in Lazio, the region in which Rome is located.

Reacting to those figures, Giordano Biserni, the chair of ASAPS – the Association of Supporters and Friends of Roads Police – said in January that the toll was as though all the participants in the Giro d’Italia had been killed.

He said that the number of casualties were a “reflection of a lack of safety absent above all in cities, where an ever-greater number of cycle tracks built by councils to protect users contrasts with the distraction and high speed of many motorists.

He insisted that the bicycle “must absolutely be more protected in cities both small and large, ever-more congested,” and called for an increase in the number of traffic police, as well as greater enforcement of the law.

“The year 2024, which has just begun, must see all of us respect the rules of the road, to reduce the numbers of crosses and bouquets of flowers that line so many roadsides,” he added.

The safety of cyclists is a topic that sadly makes the headlines all to often in the Italy’s media due to  the high profile of some victims, with recent years seeing the deaths of two of the country’s leading professional cyclists, Michele Scarponi, hit by a van driver in 2017 while training in his home region of Le Marche, and Davide Rebellin, struck by a lorry driver close to a truck stop in the Veneto region in 2022.

The driver who killed Scarponi died from cancer before he could be brought to justice, while the driver of the lorry involved in Rebellin’s death, who failed to stop at the scene and fled to his home country of Germany, was extradited last year to Italy, where he awaits trial.

> “We do not want revenge, but justice”: Plea deal for lorry driver accused of killing Davide Rebellin rejected by Italian court