Muriel Furrer and her father Reto always had the same tradition. On the startline of each race, they would find each other through the crowd, pack down their middle three fingers, and outstretch their thumbs and pinkies.
“Hang loose”, they called it, their moment of calm before the peloton’s chaos. At the same time, Muriel knew her mother, Christine, would be praying for her safety.
Reto and Christine had followed their 18-year-old daughter’s cycling career across Europe. Part of the Swiss Cycling Under-19 team, she won a road national junior title in 2022, and a medal in this year’s Mountain Biking European Championships in Romania.
The family clocked up thousands of miles between races, gathering stories along the way. The time Muriel’s directions led to their campervan becoming wedged in a Verona sidestreet. Prising open a hotel window with bike tools. Card games every evening.
But the Furrers did not need their campervan for September’s World Championships, when the planet’s greatest riders would flock to Zurich, just 20 minutes from Muriel’s home in the village of Egg. The 74km junior women’s road race course began in Uster, just one town over, winding over tarmac she had ridden hundreds of times before. It was to be the biggest race of her fledgling career.
“Muriel always dreamt of these Worlds,” says Christine. “It was a big goal for her. She’d post on Instagram, she’d always talk about it with me, with Reto, with family and friends.”
On her wall, Muriel made a collage of ambitions — the World Championships, the Olympics, but also the sort of person she wanted to become. “Gratitude is my superpower” is underlined.
The collage in Muriel’s room (Credit: Jacob Whitehead)
Next to it is another quote, an exhausted but ecstatic athlete on the finish line. “One day I won’t be able to do this,” it reads. “So I have to enjoy it while I can.”
On the day of the race, Reto and Christine stood waiting in central Zurich, holding their handmade cardboard signs. “Hopp Muriel.” “Go Muriel.” They began to worry when she did not pass them at the end of the course’s first lap. They contacted Swiss Cycling’s team car, but nobody could tell them any news.
Muriel never finished the World Championships.
She had crashed, on a descent leading towards Kusnacht, a suburb on the shores of Lake Zurich, with 45km remaining. The area is heavily wooded, and having left the road, she disappeared from view.
It was only after the race ended that a track marshal found Muriel unconscious in the woods.
At one of the world’s biggest cycling races, just a 10-minute drive from her front door, she had been lying alone and injured for about an hour and a half.
Muriel was airlifted to a Zurich hospital with a traumatic brain injury. She died the next day.
The signs made by Muriel’s family for the World Championships (Credit: Jacob Whitehead)
“How are we supposed to live without you?” Christine asked in her eulogy. “Without your beautiful cards with Bible verses for birthdays and Christmas? Without your loving signs in every corner? Why did you have to die so early? Why wasn’t I allowed to go?
“Why didn’t I alert the police when you didn’t show up? Why didn’t God reduce the pressure in your brain despite the best possible therapy? Why didn’t the prayer that you would cross the finish line in one piece help?”
Her death has left elite cycling’s tight-knit community shaken, and asking serious questions of both local organisers and cycling’s governing body, the UCI. Juan Ayuso, a high-profile talent in the peloton, described the delay as “disgraceful”.
In the weeks following the tragic incident, The Athletic travelled to Zurich to speak to Muriel’s family and coaches, visit the World Championships course, and put concerns to both race organisers and the UCI.
This is the story of Muriel Furrer — how she lived and how she died, her talent and what was taken away.
“I really hope that in the future, they make changes,” says Reto. “The details are sometimes too difficult, and don’t help bring back Muriel. But we have to be sure this won’t happen again.”
In their kitchen in Egg, Christine is making tea and coffee.
“Muriel was a brilliant baker,” she explains. “She made waffles here, and cookies, and muffins. It smelled wonderful in this house. That’s something I miss.”
As a baby, Christine used to put Muriel on the back of her bike as she completed her errands. It rubbed off on their youngest child.
“She tried ballet, and did it for one or two years, but we were happy she stopped because she liked to move in nature,” says Christine.
Muriel racing on her mountain bike (Credit: Furrer family)
“It began because she had a long way to school,” adds Reto. “You could take the bus, but she wanted to go by bike. She just rode every day, four times a day, and she really loved it.”
One day, her mother spotted a flyer for the local club, and that was it. “She was always the most little girl compared to the others, and it was hard for her to win,” Christine says. “And for the first year she had a very old bike. But you could see she had a fire for this sport. It was in her eyes.”
Muriel began entering local races, with Reto, a keen Ironman participant, transitioning to become her coach and mechanic. Quickly, her parents realised they had a talent on their hands. She was around 13 when she became too fast for them.
Recognition came with the Swiss national team, which she made as a 14-year-old. Riding across mountain biking, cyclo-cross, and the road, 2024 was the first year she had qualified for the junior World Championships in all three disciplines.
“She was very strong on hills,” says Reto. “And she really liked technical stuff. But she really wanted races with elevation, not flat ones — although she was getting pretty good on those too. She was a fighter.”
Reto and Christine Furrer at home in Egg (Credit: Jacob Whitehead)
“Road racing was not always easy, because she came from mountain biking,” says Kathrin Stirnemann, who coached Muriel both privately and for the national team.
“She had to learn to become a better rider at positioning and tactics. She was a little afraid of road cycling sometimes, like riding in the bunch in hectic races on narrow roads — but she always wanted to learn, and she always took on the challenge.
“‘What can I do better? Where did I go wrong there? Can I do another jumping session? Can we work on these skills?’ She was so motivated.”
The Swiss junior team was a tight-knit group. Muriel was especially close to Lara Liehner, who lived nearby and was a classmate — when Lara beat her to gold at the Swiss Championships road time trial, Furrer immediately put her disappointment to one side to praise her friend.
“She was the most social girl, she took care of everyone,” says Stirnemann. “She hated when someone was outside the group, so if any girls were a bit detached, she was the connection. She was always laughing. She was the sunshine in that group.”
At a memorial in early November, one team-mate, who had struggled with the separate loss of one of their friends, described how Muriel was always there to listen during training camps.
“The night before the race, she would ask her friends: ‘Who wants to pray with me?’,” says Christine. “They always said yes.”
As they describe their daughter’s life, the Furrers touch on the difficulties of professional sport. At times, Muriel struggled with eating, pressure, and homesickness.
“Most of the good racers are really lightweight, and it’s a big thing for the girls when they’re that age,” says Reto. “She wasn’t the only one. She struggled, a kind of sickness for one year — it wasn’t bulimia, but it was mental. If she gained one kilogram, she thought it was a big problem.”
But with professional help, and also working closely with Stirnemann, Muriel began to return to top form. Though she had begun a part-time placement at an insurance firm as part of her school education, the goal was to turn professional.
“Muriel had a straight idea of what the future would look like,” says Christine.
“She had the talent, and for sure the mindset to go professional,” adds Stirnemann. “So why not?”
Muriel after completing a race for the Swiss national team (Credit: Furrer family)
A long-term goal — the 2032 Brisbane Olympics — was written on her bedroom wall in sparkly silver pen.
This was a real possibility — with Zurich, the season’s final race, a key waymark. Living almost on the race route, she regularly rode the course, both alone and with Lara. When she trained alone, she fitted a tracker on her bike so her family would know where she was.
The descent to Kusnacht was a road she’d ridden dozens of times before, leading towards her favourite mountain, the Uetliberg, on the other side of Zurich.
“She knew every metre, every curve,” says Reto.
“That’s why it’s so unbelievable that it could unfold like this,” adds Christine.
The morning of the road race on September 26 brought rain, conditions that made descending far more treacherous. However, the Swiss team had both wet tires and the appropriate kit — the conditions were not seen as too dangerous to race.
“It was a little more slippery, but you know they’re almost professionals,” says Reto. “They know how to handle it.”
Stirnemann was with the team before the start. “Muriel was always super nervous, but she always had a plan. She wrote down steps and times of what she had to do before the race. She always had that little book and it helped her a lot.
“She actually fell out of the campervan that morning, it was wet and she slipped down the stairs, but it didn’t hurt. It was a funny moment, it put the team at ease. She did her warm-up as normal and went to the startline.”
There, Muriel saw her father. “Hang loose.” Christine said a quiet prayer.
“You know that I didn’t always have your UCI points and rankings exactly in my head,” she would later say at Muriel’s funeral. “I repeatedly asked you questions about cycling, which you patiently answered, but I should have been aware of them. Your ranking wasn’t important to me. I was happy when you crossed the finish line in one piece.”
This was the day Muriel had dreamed of, her home World Championships. Both sat on their bikes, she turned to Lara, and told her, “I’m ready”.
Junior cycling races are chaotic.
“I remember after just 1km, some girls who really shouldn’t have been in the race were already being dropped,” says Stirnemann, who was in the Swiss team car. “Because of that, the cars had to be really far back. At one point, we were maybe 4km behind the leaders. It was really difficult to get an oversight of the race.”
After a lap of the Greifensee, a lake between Uster and Egg, riders ascended a ridge that bordered Lake Zurich, the major climb of the race. The route then dropped them into Kusnacht, from which they would race into central Zurich, before repeating a second lap up the climb and back into the city to the finish.
After seeing Muriel in Uster, the Furrer family travelled to a climb in central Zurich — their plan was to see the riders begin the second lap, and then walk down the hill to the finish. The signs they made now sit on the floor of their daughter’s room.
“We thought it might be a good place, because they’ll be coming slowly up the hill,” says Christine. “But she didn’t come on the first lap. There was no Muriel.”
“Sometimes in mountain biking you have technical problems — a flat tyre, health issues, a crash,” adds Reto. “But in Zurich on the street races, it’s not usual. So I was a little bit nervous.”
Furrer was not in the leading group up the climb, but was positioned around 50th of 120 riders. She was not captured by the race broadcast during the steep, wooded descent towards Kusnacht. Organisers say that although they altered parts of the course throughout the planning period as part of the normal safety process, no concerns had been raised about this section by either administrators or riders.
Muriel signing in before the race (Credit: Furrer family)
“Of course, it’s a descent, it’s in the forest,” says Olivier Senn, sporting director of the Zurich 2024 organising committee, a separate body to the UCI, which was responsible for the day-to-day planning of the event.
“We were aware as organisers that it’s not a Formula 1 racecourse, there are safety gaps on the side, but where we thought it was risky, we had protection mats, we put marshals, and then on that specific day, because we knew it was bad weather, we put additional marshals there.
“In hindsight, it’s always easy to look at the specific situation, but in general the descent was not very dangerous. I think we did the safety measures that we could foresee for such a race.”
Though Furrer’s descent was not caught by television cameras, The Athletic has seen footage of the peloton descending the climb, taken approximately 350m before the crash site.
Rather than being alone, as had been initially thought, Furrer was second wheel in a four-strong group of riders. They would reach the crash site around 15 seconds later, a left-hander that, off-camber and under slippery conditions, had been identified by organisers as a tricky corner.
It is not known exactly why Furrer left the road, though two other minor crashes had already occurred elsewhere. Three months after the accident, Swiss authorities are still investigating.
The view uphill towards the bend where Muriel crashed (Credit: Jacob Whitehead)
After Furrer’s group passes, the foursome can be seen in the distance navigating another left hander, the penultimate bend before the crash site. Having been in single-file previously, one rider — too far away to definitively identify — moves off the racing line at the apex of the corner, appearing to overtake. Such a manoeuvre in wet conditions would have further complicated the descent for all the riders in Muriel’s group.
The Athletic is not naming the riders in the group given the sensitive nature of what unfolded but has been told that no rider clearly saw Furrer’s crash. It is not considered the responsibility of riders to identify crashes and without race radios, they would have had no way to inform race officials in any case.
The race continued. In Zurich, Furrer’s family watched the entire field complete the first lap, without their daughter, before calling Stirnemann. It was then that the Swiss team realised she was missing.
“During the race, we saw her once from far back when the bunch was together, and we also knew from the live stream that Muriel was not in the leading group,” says Stirnemann. “And then, when we passed her parents, it was clear: ‘OK, we didn’t pass her, she must be somewhere.’”
“Muriel’s dad called me because he knew I was in the car. He said: ‘Hey, do you know where Muriel is?’ And I said: ‘No, we are actually looking for her.’ We were calling around. I called the feed zone. Did she pass there? I called the doctor who was at the finish. And we couldn’t find her. At one point, the race was finished and we still didn’t know where she was.”
Furrer’s family had walked to the Swiss team caravan in central Zurich, but nobody could provide them with updates.
“We waited there,” remembers Christine. “We waited. A difficult wait, many minutes. Her team-mates finished their races and came back, and everybody was upset, really scared.”
The crash occurred at approximately 11.03am, with video footage demonstrating it was at least 17 minutes before the team car passed Reto and Christine, and the Swiss team car knew she was missing. The leaders passed the crash site for a second time 40 minutes after the accident — with TV coverage showing no signs of emergency response.
Great Britain’s Cat Ferguson won the race at 11.58am, with the final Swiss rider finishing five minutes later. By 12.36pm, Reto had still heard no news of Muriel, and tried her mobile phone, in case she was sitting somewhere on the course, disappointed with how her race had gone.
It was only afterwards that Furrer’s family say they were approached by a UCI official, who told them a tracker on Muriel’s bike was stationary near Kusnacht. She was subsequently found by a track marshal — this was approximately 90 minutes after crashing.
Tributes on the bend where Muriel crashed (Credit: Jacob Whitehead)
Footage from the subsequent men’s Para-cycling race, taken at 12.45pm, subsequently shows ambulances at the site of Muriel’s accident, alongside Swiss team physios. A rescue helicopter from nearby Dubendorf landed just before 1pm. It would take around 30 minutes to prepare her for transport, owing to the inaccessibility of the location and the severity of her condition.
When Muriel arrived in hospital, the extent of her injuries were clear. Part of her skull had already been removed to relieve pressure on the brain.
“The doctors did all they could,” says Christine. “The whole manpower went in, but it didn’t help. Treatment was unsuccessful, and we have to manage with this reality. After surgery, the pressure didn’t go down, and in the evening they told us she was hardly surviving. That was the moment we called our families.”
Muriel (right) with her siblings Michelle and Eric (Credit: Furrer family)
Christine stayed overnight with Muriel in the hospital, praying, and stroking her head. Somehow, she defied doctors’ expectations to survive into the next afternoon. Before beginning her story, Christine passes over a eulogy she wrote for Muriel’s funeral. It reads:
“Muriel, you once said to me, ‘Our life on earth is precious, but the greatest gift is life after death’. You received the greatest gift after your last competition. I was allowed to be with you on the darkest night of your death in the intensive care unit. You, I, and our God, enveloped by the Holy Spirit, by his light, survived the night.
“Unfortunately, another miracle failed to materialise. You have gone before us, dear Muriel. I am eternally grateful for 18 years together on this earth. I promised you on your deathbed that I would continue in faith in your spirit. So I am sure that we will meet again.”
A memorial ride was held one day after she died. The family gave their blessing for the World Championships to continue racing.
“I’ve been involved in the organisation of some races, I know this is a decision you have to make very early,” says Reto.
“Life goes on,” explains Christine. “The show must go on. But as well, all the athletes who came from worldwide, arriving for the championships, we felt it was important they can show their fire. They must go further. They should do what they love.”
A young Muriel with the family’s cat, Micky (Credit: Furrer family)
Coming to terms with the tragedy is a difficult process. Those involved have been asking why — not just about the crash itself, but how such a serious accident, at one of the sport’s biggest races, can leave a rider alone for so long?
An investigation led by the local police and the Zurich public prosecutor is ongoing, charged with determining whether there is any proof of criminal misconduct around the crash. Some parts of Muriel’s accident — specifically, the exact chain of communication between authorities during the search — cannot be fully discussed by witnesses.
Contacted in early December, a spokesperson stated that “to date, no criminal proceedings have been initiated”. They added that it would not be possible to predict when the investigation would be complete, with authorities still awaiting forensic medical reports.
It is unclear whether a quicker response would have saved Muriel, though the family expect this to be covered by the investigation. They point to the example of Gino Mader, another Swiss rider, who suffered a traumatic brain injury during a descent at last year’s Tour de Suisse. Mader died, aged 26, despite receiving almost immediate medical treatment.
Muriel’s injury might have been fatal regardless of the response time — but what is certain is that the delay only had the potential to worsen her condition.
Reto and Christine do not want to criticise the governing bodies and organisers before the full investigation is released, but believe it is crucial that any apparent failings are identified, ensuring no other family goes through what they have.
In particular, two key issues need clarifying. Race footage of the leaders passing the crash site on the first loop, minutes before the incident, shows three marshals below the corner, each of whom appears to have a clear line of sight. The closest marshal was just 60m away.
Three marshals downhill of the bend where Muriel crashed (Credit: Eurosport)
According to Senn, race marshals have different roles — the three after the bend were ‘crowd control marshals’, who are members of the Swiss Civil Protection. Their primary role was to prevent observers from crossing the road on the intersecting forest trails. They are also meant to look out for athletes, if in position.
Two marshals can also be seen on the right-hander immediately before the crash site — though without a direct view of where Muriel went off the road.
Senn confirmed to The Athletic they were placed there as a result of the wet weather, and explained they were experienced ‘race marshals’, who travel around the course on motorbikes to warn riders approaching dangerous positions. After the race, it was one of these marshals who eventually found Muriel.
Two marshals at the bend before the crash site (Credit: Eurosport)
With at least five marshals in the immediate vicinity, including three seemingly with a direct view, it has not been explained how Muriel’s crash was not initially seen, or, afterwards, once authorities were informed she was missing, how she could not have been found more quickly.
Asked to provide an explanation, the local organisers stated, “It is our understanding, that no marshal (on motorbikes) or civil protection member saw the crash site from their position”. They added they were unable to comment on why she was not found more quickly because of the ongoing investigation.
The second issue is tracking. This is not a new technology, but rather one that has become standard issue across both bike computers and Strava. There is also a vast array of equipment, including watches, computers, and helmets, which can sense a crash and send an alert to pre-selected contacts.
In UCI races, cycling’s governing body is in control of what technology sits on the bike. For Muriel’s race, riders had a transponder — recording when riders pass through checkpoints — which also contained a rudimental tracker, provided by Swiss Timing.
However, this technology was limited — intended so that television motorbikes could identify the riders on-screen, rather than as any form of safety or race visualisation feature.
“We had transmitters on the motorbikes and not on helicopters,” a spokesperson for Swiss Timing told The Athletic. “This means you need bikes nearby to ensure constant tracking of the riders. It is always at the discretion of the UCI and the organisers as to which system they want to deploy.”
Because this was neither a safety system nor publicly accessible, and with riders not allowed to attach their own tracking technology to their bike, it meant Swiss Cycling had no way of checking her location quickly.
Muriel’s family, coaches, and even the local organisers believe it is clear the use of tracking technology needs to change. People familiar with the matter have told The Athletic that the technology was consulted as part of the search for Muriel, but stakeholders were reluctant to discuss the details amid the investigation.
“For me, personally, it was too long before she was found,” says Reto. “Thirty minutes after the crash happened, I was already sure it was something bad. It’s difficult — you don’t always know with a rider in the race whether they might have decided to stop, to ride home because they’re disappointed. You don’t know. But if you have a tracker, you have to use this tracker — and check. They had a kind of tracker, not the best one, but they had one.”
“If there is a crash, the tracker has to set off an alarm and someone has to be in charge and looking for these trackers,” argues Stirnemann. “If no one checks this, no one knows. They already have this in the Garmin (a popular bike computer). And for sure, it would be perfect if helmets have a big hit alarm.”
Senn, in charge of the sporting arm of the local organising committee, is the organiser of other domestic races including the Tour de Suisse. He tells The Athletic that he will be ensuring that a safety-focused tracking system will be introduced at his races going forward. It will not be publicly accessible, just available to teams and organisers, to avoid complex data negotiations.
“(Trackers) could have certainly reduced the time between the crash and Muriel being found a lot,” says Senn. “If we have responsibility for 100, 150, 200 athletes on our roads, it’s also a responsibility to know where they are and what they do, and that’s where GPS tracking comes into play, because it’s impossible to oversee them all the time without such devices.”
The Athletic has been told of two separate parties which offered local organisers and the UCI use of publicly-accessible tracking systems ahead of the race. Neither of these were taken up.
One of these was from Christian Sailer, an academic who worked for Esri, an analytics and spatial mapping company. With the World Championships coming to Zurich, the city where he lived, he offered local organisers use of Esri technology for free as a showcase.
Organisers engaged with Sailer, and the parties swapped emails over a six-month period. However, their final contact was on June 24, three months before the championships — Sailer received no further communication until after the race.
“I was asking myself if I should have done more,” Sailer tells The Athletic. “Should I have pushed them? I felt sad, because I knew that with my system, the outcome, theoretically, could have been different.”
When Sailer made this point to the organising committee in October, he received a reply which stated: “It seems undisputed that technical solutions such as GPS trackers would probably have helped in this unfortunate situation.
“The authority to introduce and use such means lies with the UCI. For Zurich 2024, in addition to the short time available, there were too many other aspects that were open for implementation and integration into existing technical systems (e.g. timekeeping) to have been possible. That is regrettable, but unfortunately there was nothing that could be done about it.”
Andreas Herren, communications director of the organising committee, later confirmed to The Athletic that as well as the UCI, Swiss Timing would also have needed to provide approval. “It wasn’t a viable solution under the circumstances that could be implemented on that day,” he said.
Sailer’s approach came nine months before the World Championships — but another group had already been lobbying the UCI for years.
Velon, a commercial company set up by cycling’s top teams, confirmed to The Athletic over email it had previously spoken to the UCI about adopting their tracking system. Though it is intended primarily for fan engagement, the group say its partner teams use it for safety — pointing to Remco Evenepoel’s terrifying crash at Il Lombardia in 2020, where a Velon tracker immediately notified his team of the fall.
“When we first launched the system we worked closely with the UCI on its deployment, jointly creating the rules of governance and exploring ways the system might be used for more than our commercial activities,” said Graham Bartlett, the company’s CEO. “Sadly that was not the case in recent years. The UCI’s approach has been to try to develop their own separate system. We remain open to collaborate and use what we’ve developed.”
In response to questions asking why numerous tracking data collaborations were turned down, the UCI stated: “In light of the recent tragedy at the UCI Road and Para-cycling Road World Championships in Zurich and the subsequent loss of the young Swiss rider, Muriel Furrer, our thoughts and deepest condolences remain with her family, friends, and the Swiss Cycling community.
“Due to the fact that the police investigation into the circumstances of the accident is still ongoing, led by Swiss authorities, we are not in a position to discuss its details at this time. We appreciate everyone’s understanding and patience as we await further developments.
“Regarding the use of trackers, we can confirm that in our role as race organiser of the UCI Road World Championships, the trackers used are those provided by our service provider for timing and data, Swiss Timing. Whereas trackers using 5G transmission and enabling transmission of localisation data at all times do exist, they are, to date, only used in a very small number of events on the international calendar.
“The UCI, in its role as governing body, is currently exploring potential software and hardware developments that would enable the broadest number of event organisers and teams to access localisation data live and at all times as well as ensuring that in-race devices also serve for safety whenever possible.”
Nevertheless, the UCI’s failure to reach an agreement, nor develop their own alternative, meant that at the World Championships, Muriel’s bicycle did not contain a tracker optimised for safety purposes.
Muriel’s grave in Egg (Credit: Jacob Whitehead)
After her death, numerous riders publicly expressed their outrage at what they saw as a safety failing.
“We see the response time with Muriel’s death, and it’s just not good enough,” Australian rider Chloe Hosking tells The Athletic. “And as more information came out, I got angrier and angrier. It made me very sad to think of a young girl with so much potential left alone. And it’s just heartbreaking, honestly. There’s a time for silence, and there’s a time when you’re meant to be angry. You’re meant to say things need to be better.”
Perhaps the most emotional post came from 20-year-old Italian Andrea Raccagni, another competitor at the World Championships. It was liked and reshared by dozens of cyclists.
“I wanted to make a nice post with some photos of my experience at the World Championship, but right from the start I thought it wasn’t right,” he wrote on Instagram. “A week has passed and (except for a few articles) no one is talking about it anymore.
“We are just accepting it, but is that what we want? Certainly not Muriel’s family, to whom I send my deepest condolences, and at the same time I apologise, because I had the opportunity to speak out and I didn’t do it sooner.
“And I want to apologise to you, Muriel, because like every other 18-year-old person, you deserved to live your life to the fullest and not waste it like this, and I feel guilty about that. I would like every athlete who has been in situations that were too dangerous and who has never said it out loud, to join me in apologising to them.
“Some ideas will come, but we have to start somewhere.”
To which the UCI added, speaking to The Athletic: “Safety remains our top priority, and this tragic event underscores the critical importance of our ongoing efforts to enhance rider safety. The recent creation of SafeR, an entity dedicated to safety in professional road cycling, with the constant implication of all stakeholders of cycling, shall be pivotal for the common objective of improved safety to be attained through responsive and preventative actions.
“Further to the recent SafeR Supervisory Board Meeting, Professional Cycling Council (PCC) meeting and the UCI Women’s WorldTour and UCI WorldTour Seminar, the collective commitment was once again confirmed with endorsement of several safety-related measures. A comprehensive update on these safety measures shall be presented during an online press conference with SafeR stakeholders in January.”
Muriel’s teammates have begun training again. Many still find it difficult. At the national team’s camp, they spoke openly about the loss.
“I’ve never seen so many rainbows than after she died,” says Stirnemann. “I saw them on the day itself, I saw them from my balcony. My brother was married in Tuscany the next week, I saw them there too. When something happens, that’s a sign.”
The sign-in board for the World Championships (Credit: Jacob Whitehead)
Muriel’s bikes remain in the family’s garage, lined up and ready to race. Behind them is the sign-in board from the startline, gifted to the family by the town of Uster. Muriel’s name is in the centre.
She used to write Bible verses on her frames, and her favourite, Isaiah 40:31, is repeated on many of the dozens of floral tributes. It is apt for a talented cyclist.
“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
At her grave, a short ride downhill from the family home, there are flecks of rain on a miniature bicycle; they rotate around the wheels in the December wind.
(Top image: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic, graphics John Bradford, photo credit: Furrer family)
