Cycling: Spanish Cyclist Jose Maria Jimenez Dies of Heart Attack

For the fourth time this year, professional road racing has been left in a state of shock by the premature death of one of its stars. The Spanish cyclist Jose Maria Jimenez was confirmed to have died on Saturday night, at the age of 32, from a heart attack in the San Miguel psychiatric hospital in Madrid.

The popular mountain specialist retired two years ago when suffering from depression but consistently claimed a comeback was imminent. He will be buried today in his home village of El Barraco, in Avila province.

All this year's cycling deaths have led to controversy. The demise of the Kazakh Andrei Kivilev, from head injuries during the Paris-Nice race in March, led to the almost instant imposition of protective helmets, in spite of protests from some of his fellow professionals.

The death of the Italian Denis Zanette, who collapsed while visiting the dentist in January, was instantly linked to the use of the blood-booster erythropoietin. And questions have been raised about the quality of the medical monitoring given to cyclists since the young Frenchman Fabrice Salanson died of a heart attack in his sleep in June.

The death of Jimenez will come as an unwelcome reminder of the connection between cycling and recreational drug use, highlighted in confessional books published by Festina team members following the scandal-hit Tour de France of 1998. "He liked night life and its excesses," admitted an unnamed former professional yesterday. "He did not have 10% of the career he might have had."

Jimenez became, briefly, the most popular cyclist in Spain following the retirement in 1996 of the five-times Tour winner Miguel Indurain. One of Indurain's most trusted team-mates at the start of his career, Jimenez was a fine climber who won eight stages in the Tour of Spain, three times winning the King of the Mountains award.

Nicknamed "El Chaba" - foulmouth - Jimenez's all-or-nothing style of attacking in the mountains was in complete contrast to Indurain's conservative approach, and won him the support of Spain's cycling public. But he stopped racing at the end of 2001 and was admitted to hospital suffering from depression.

"He lost his way for reasons outside cycling, and quit just like that," said Indurain yesterday. "I knew he was going through problems but it seemed he was getting better. But the body stops and says, 'enough'."