VANCOUVER – John Botelho, a 49-year-old accountant and triathlon race organizer from Victoria, remains unconscious in Lions Gate Hospital, from injuries sustained in a terrible crash in the early stages of Saturday’s RBC GranFondo Whistler mass bike ride.
“He hasn’t woken up yet. I was pretty inconsolable this morning,” his wife Hillerie Denning said late Monday.
“I was hoping he would open his eyes but he didn’t.”
“This is the kind of guy who doesn’t like to waste time sleeping. He’s an incredibly active person who is always doing things.”
She added that physicians put Botelho in an induced coma and told her that he has swelling in the frontal lobe of his brain.
Denning, who is also Botelho’s training partner, was also in the GranFondo and rode past her stricken husband, shortly after he fell on the Upper Levels Highway in West Vancouver.
But she did not recognize him. “I saw a cyclist lying face down, not moving, with a bike on top of him. Even though we had slowed, we were still going close to 40 kilometres an hour and I was surrounded by people. So I had no idea it was him.”
It did convince her to be cautious in her own riding.
“I thought: “˜Whoa. There’s so many people. I’ve got to be careful until it thins out.’”
Denning continued on the GranFondo ride and wasn’t informed by police that the man lying on the pavement was her husband until she was just about to enter Whistler.
“The police came from the side of the road, yelling my name into a bullhorn, and telling me to pull over. My immediate reaction was: “˜What did I do?’”
It took the police several hours to locate Denning because of her speed.
“I would have finished in about four hours and 15 minutes. And because I’m 52, they thought I would be much further back in the ride.”
The sight of Botelho lying on the side of the road was a shock to thousands of cyclists who were forced to momentarily slow down as they rode past him just before Eagleridge Drive.
Based on what she has been told, Denning believes her husband was riding on the left side of the dedicated bike lane and hit an unmarked grate.
“He dropped into it at great speed. That caused the tires to pop and him to hit the concrete divider head first. The bike landed on top of him.”
Botelho was the director of a series of triathlon races in Victoria. He recently resumed his accounting practice.
Botelho was an excellent cyclist and runner, who also competed in marathons and duathlons, Denning said. He was planning to run in the Victoria Marathon in October.
Denning went for an hour run Monday afternoon around the Seymour Demonstration Forest with a good friend.
“The medical staff told me to go and do what I would normally do. And to take care of myself, because I’m going to have a long road taking care of him.”
Denning said she has been deluged with e-mails and phone calls from friends all over the world. “Many people know him and like him. He’s a very kind and caring person.”
Denning said Botelho had really looked forward to completing the GranFondo.
“He was really excited about it. We had been to Europe and competed in gran fondos in 2006 and 2008.”
The couple arrived in Vancouver Thursday and had enjoyed walking down Robson Street and visiting Granville Island. They were on a GranFondo team with friends called “Holey Shorts.”
“He was just so happy, you know. And he was so happy at the start of the GranFondo too,” Denning recalled.
“He was just grinning from ear to ear.”
dward@vancouversun.com
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