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Corrado Herin, winner of the 1997 DH World Cup, was celebrating his birthday

Corrado Herin, one of the best downhillers we have had in Italy, the only Italian able to win the DH World Cup circuit.

1997-bonazzi-corrado-herin
© Fat Tire Fotos - Giovanna Bonazzi and Corrado Herin of Team Sintesi

Conrad Herin  (August 4, 1966 – March 31, 2019) was an Italian luger and mountain biker, specialist in downhill. She was a bronze medalist world championships of downhill in 1994 and winner in the world cup general in 1997.

Destiny was fatal with him: on March 31, 2019, Corrado Herin lost his life, crashed with his ultralight.
I didn't have time to know him personally but all the people I talk to describe him as a beautiful person. Here is the personal memory written by Paolo Codeluppi in the 365mountainbike magazine shortly after the unpleasant event. Paolo was a very active photographer and journalist in mountain biking in the years when Corrado was one of the best downhill skiers in the world.

A GREAT HOLIDAY

by Paolo Codeluppi

It was 2000, the entrance to a new millennium. There was talk of Inca legends, of millennium Bugs and we were all anxious to be the custodians of this passage on the counter of our calendar. That particular sensation that is triggered when the odometer of the bike passes 100.000 or when you turn forty: and you feel no more or less the same as before or after. But it is so. And for not knowing how to read or write (actually we did a little bit), we are in Vail, in mid-July, for the fifth round of the World Cup.

Even Italy, faced with the excessive power of the French, can still have its say. We are located in a beautiful hotel not far from the golf course. Vail seems a bit magical to us, unspoiled but at the same time very "American". Corrado is the standard-bearer of the Sintesi Team and at the end of the races together with his girlfriend, his mechanic and one of my collaborators we move to Moab to make a video, which has become historic, campaigns and covers for our home magazines.

The journey is not long, just over 400 km, but lived in a very “on the road” style.

Country music, the kind with which you would drive all the way to the end of the world and a lot of energy inside. In Mack, just before entering Utah, we leave I-70 west to enter the John Wayne movies. I've been to Moab a couple of times before but as with all great movies, you gladly review them. The landscape changes gradually and from alpine-style conifers we move on to Salsola shrubs (the famous rolling thorny shrubs of the American desert) as the earth begins to paint itself red.

At Cisco we take 128 South which plunges into the Colorado riverbed. Around us red sandstone, the famous Navajo Sandstone, walls of hundreds of vertical meters. We were now in the dream. We were just waiting for feathers to appear on horseback above us, among the white clouds… Moab in July is like stepping into a hair dryer on.

We worked from 7 to 9.30 and from 16.30 to 20.30. Impossible to work overtime ...

Working meant shooting around, filming and helping Corrado carry the Bazooka Synthesis up and down the Slick Rocks, the incredible petrified dunes. It was a week of sweat and steaks. One day Corrado suffered a heat stroke. He had a bit of a fever and could not stand up. In the village a fire broke out and in the evening, while we were at the restaurant, the team of dirty and scorched firefighters entered, welcomed in typical American style, like real heroes. Corrado, a firefighter himself, looks at me and says: "fuck these have just put out the flames and look like they came out of crystal hell. If they know that I got a fever to do two shit on a bike they make me an ass like this ..."

Those were memorable days, in which we made fun of ourselves, we had fun. In which simple people like him wrote a small piece of history of this great sport. All that remains for me is to tell you so that even those who have not known it can feel its spirit. It is not do-gooding or recognition of a missing person but a deep bond that goes beyond the daily attendance. An indestructible value that belongs to all of us and that we must never forget since the past never returns in life. I want to remind you so.



Written by

[email protected] I am a fan of everything that has 2 wheels: at a young age I practiced road and track cycling (Italian Allievi champion). At the age of 18 I passed into the cross country competing at national/international level as an Under23. Past Elite, I made the choice to take things more lightly from a training point of view, and my love for gravity disciplines was born, training me as an FCI MTB instructor and guide. Now I have made passion my profession by managing 2 MTB centers on the island of Elba (Bike Center Elba and Elba MTB), creating the FANTAmtb and telling in an ironic but professional way everything that revolves around MTB thanks to 365mountainbike and 365TV (YouTube'PULITI dentro BIKER fuori').

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