Italian music icon Jovanotti has detailed the harrowing bicycle accident that shattered his femur and clavicle in Santo Domingo two years ago, describing the immediate numbness after impact and his grueling recovery in a candid Facebook post. On July 15, 2023, while vacationing in the Dominican Republic with his wife Francesca, the artist set out at dawn on a gravel bike to cross the island’s central ridge toward a secluded beach. Riding through an “endless emerald-green sugarcane plantation,” he struck a nearly invisible speed bump laid by a roadside fruit vendor. “I flew off, getting badly hurt,” Jovanotti wrote.
Initially unaware of the severity—even filming a smiling video amid the wreckage—he soon realized his foot was twisted backward and his collarbone pierced his shoulder skin. Rescuers’ voices faded into ambulance sirens, marking the start of a “new adventure”: a botched emergency surgery in a “reggaeton-club-like operating room” led to a bacterial bone infection, followed by months of physiotherapy and an 8-hour reconstructive operation in Italy.
Despite lingering pain he now calls a “travel companion,” Jovanotti completed a 54-concert tour where music momentarily eclipsed suffering: “The pain forgot to be there and danced with me.” On July 26, he headlines the No Borders Festival in Fusine, accessible only by bicycle. Defying his injuries, he’ll attempt a 770-km ride to the venue—one kilometer for each day since the crash.
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