The widow of a cyclist killed five years ago is frustrated by the delay in concluding the case against the man charged with his manslaughter, saying her family has had to make huge sacrifices.

“There are three cases and because they are intertwined this causes delays,” she said.

“This includes the civil case I filed for compensation. We needed the money then and now, when the full impact of losing Cliff was most acute, not several years later,” Shirley Micallef said.

Until there is real change to cyclists’ safety on the road, I really do not want my sons to do the Life Cycle

She was speaking to this newspaper yesterday, five years to the date since her 45-year-old husband was killed along the Coast Road while training for the 2009 Life Cycle challenge.

“The compensation is there to make up for the loss of a husband and father, and to allow my children to have as normal a life as they would have had, had he been alive. You cannot help but think of their lost opportunities...

“And in the meantime, the court procedures are dragging on and it is so difficult for me to keep going there and reopening old wounds,” she added.

Ms Micallef said her biggest disappointment was that no one seemed to think of the victims.

“Thank God for friends and family. When a case drags on, the person charged often pulls their life together and that becomes an argument to give a milder sentence. The delays work in their favour, but certainly not in that of the victims.”

Ms Micallef and her sons Max, Zak and Jon this week attended a small ceremony organised by the Life Cycle Foundation at the memorial erected in her husband’s honour in Pembroke.

It was a poignant moment, not only for the family but also for the cyclists who had become close friends, and who commemorate his loss every year. Mr Micallef had died just a few weeks before the group’s departure for the challenge. He was killed on the spot after being hit by a car allegedly driven by Anthony Taliana at Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq.

The court has since heard that Mr Taliana, then 21, admitted to drinking 12 to 13 vodkas with coke, between midnight and 4.30am. Court experts also estimate he was driving at 141km/h at the time of the accident.

Mr Taliana had been granted bail and placed under house arrest against a deposit of €1,500 and a personal guarantee of €5,000. Last May, he appealed a judgment that dismissed his claim of a breach of human rights because he had no lawyer while being interrogated.

The Constitutional Court also threw out his argument that reports by three court-appointed experts breached his rights because the content was based on what he had told them when no lawyer was present.

Ms Micallef has found solace through her campaigns to make the roads safer for cyclists but she feels there has been little progress.

“My three boys – especially Max – dream of doing the Life Cycle but I discourage them because I fear something similar might happen.

“We joke that they learned how to ride a bike before they could walk... And they looked up to their dad. But until there is some real change to cyclists’ safety on the road, I really do not want them to go.”