How cycling broke Sonny Colbrelli's heart

Sonny Colbrelli had a steady march to the top of the sport. He started as the darling of the Italian pro continental scene with the Bardiani set-up. Then came the move to team Bahrain where he developed on the World Tour into a consistent contender on the punchy finishes around the World Tour. Finally, he realised his full potential in winning the notorious 2021 Paris-Roubaix. For a couple of months, Colbrelli was on the short list of the best riders in the world. Then, in a second, he was out of the sport. For good.

At the Volta a Catalunya in March of 2022, Sonny Colbrelli suffered an exercise-induced cardiac arrest at the finish of a stage. No more than a minute after he crossed the line of stage 2, Colbrelli fell unconscious after a heart arrhythmia stopped his heartbeat for three minutes. The Italian was resuscitated on scene and was rushed to the hospital, but from that point on continuing his career was a losing battle. The Volta a Catalunya proved to be the last time the cycling world would see him race.

In a new GCN+ documentary, presenter Alan Marangoni caught up with Colbrelli a year after his collapse to talk about his early racing career, his successes and the aftermath of his final race. Marangoni not only talks to Colbrelli, but also his wife, a former team director, a mental coach, Colbrelli’s father, a sports doctor and cardiologist and some of Colbrelli’s former teammates like Matej Mohprić and Damiano Caruso who are still ensconced in the peloton.

Through these characters and Colbrelli himself, the complications of Colbrelli’s retirement is very much a developing story. To peek in at this moment, as Marangoni is able to do, gives incredible insight into the man, into the potential dangers of the sport, and the complicated psychology that all the world's top cyclists must have. A psychology that Cobrelli had to work to build up before it wound up binding him to a sport that he could no longer compete in. What had made him a winner also made it incredibly difficult to accept his inability to race safely – a challenge that is obviously still at the forefront of his conscience.

It is also still so recent. Rarely can a rider’s illustrious history that is so fresh be processed so definitively within two years of their biggest triumph. Athletes are oftentimes too stubborn to bow out on top. As evident by his reluctance to exit the scene even after a near fatal heart attack, there was no chance Colbrelli could untangle himself from cycling one year after a season like 2021. It would be fundamentally against the nature that he built in order to achieve that success.

If you consider Colbrelli’s career, the rider he was in 2021 was not so much an anomaly, but instead a refinement. Throughout the later half of the 2010’s, Colbrelli was steady in his climb up the rankings and his improvement in races like the spring classics. Yet, wins were still rare compared to how often Colbrelli would wind up on the podium. In 2021, that shifted, and podium placements became victories against the biggest riders at the big races. First at the Critérium du Dauphiné, then at the Benelux Tour, before the biggest triumphs at the European championship against Remco Evenepoel and lastly at Roubaix versus Mathieu van der Poel.

“I’ll always remember,” Corbrelli told Marangoni while reflecting on his Roubaix win” {Van der Poel] caught up and looked at me and said ’Sonny, let’s go.’ I was worried about crashing because I didn’t have his experience on the mud and cobbled but my luck was holding.”

In his first Paris-Roubaix, after a year of working on his mentality with special coaches, after years of talent development in the second division Pro Continental ranks, after the confidence that came from beating Evenepoel at the European championships. Colbrelli had belief that he could win. Or as he said in classic cycling terminology: “After that I knew I was on a good day.”

Unfortunately, that win was not another mental building block for successful racing. It is now a memory in Colbrelli’s annals of the proverbial good old days. Now, Colbrelli’s heart that pulled him to victories had sidelined him for good. As we see in the documentary, that story is something unique, tragic, but altogether fundamental to the romance and glorious complexities of our sport.

Check out the trailer for the new documentary Heartbreak: Colbrelli above and be sure to subscribe to GCN+ to watch a deep archive of bespoke cycling documentaries, as well as live racing from across the calendar and around the world.

Bahrain Victorious

• Nationality Bahrain
• Founded 2018
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• UCI Code TBV
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