SIERRA NEVADA, Spain — Spanish cyclist Xavier Tondo was killed in a freak accident Monday when he was crushed between his car and a garage door at a ski resort in southern Spain, a police source said.
Tondo, 32, was in his car about to leave the garage of an apartment building of the Sierra Nevada resort Monday morning to continue training for the Tour de France.
For reasons that remained unclear, he got out of the vehicle and became trapped between his car and the automatic door of the garage, a police source in the nearby city of Granada said.
The source said “it appears” that Tondo died instantly.
The manager of his Movistar team, Eusebio Unzue, said another Spanish professional cyclist, Benat Intxausti, was in the vehicle at the time.
The pair was among a number of cyclists who were training at altitude in the resort.
Tondo, who turned professional in 2003, won the Tour of Castilla y Leon last month, succeeding his controversial compatriot Alberto Contador.
Contador voiced his shock and sadness at the death.
“How life is unfair and sometimes difficult to understand,” he said on Twitter. “I can’t describe how I feel after the death of Xavi Tondo. My most sincere condolences to his family. He was an incredible person who loved this sport like nobody else. You will be sorely missed. Rest in peace.”
Tondo also won the Tour of Portugal in 2007, a stage of the Paris-Nice race in 2010 and came sixth overall in the Tour of Spain last year.