Eleven years after the ski accident
What is known about Michael Schumacher – and what is not
Updated 12/29/2024 – 7:35 a.mReading time: 2 minutes
Eleven years ago, Michael Schumacher had a serious accident while skiing, and the greatest German racing driver has since disappeared from the public eye. What questions do his fans ask themselves?
December 29, 2013 changed the lives of Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher and his family abruptly and dramatically.
“Schumi”, as his fans have always called him, is on a skiing holiday in Meribél, France, with his wife Corinna and their children Mick and Gina. It happened shortly after eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning. “Michael fell on his head during a private ski trip in the French Alps. He was taken to the hospital and is receiving professional medical care,” his spokeswoman Sabine Kehm announced a little later.
The drama is not clear from these words. These are hours in which it is a matter of life and death for the father of two.
Now, eleven years later, we know: Schumacher won his battle against death, but never regained the state of health he had before the accident. He hasn’t been seen in public since. Therefore, many questions about the condition of the German sports legend remain unanswered to this day.
That can only be assumed. In the accident, Schumacher suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and was in a coma. At the beginning of April 2014, Schumacher’s manager Sabine Kehm announced: “Michael is making progress on his path. He is showing moments of awareness and awakening.” Nothing more has been made public since then.
Schumacher was transferred home from Grenoble hospital for further rehabilitation. His wife Corinna said in the Netflix documentary “Schumacher”, which was released in September 2021: “Everyone misses Michael. But Michael is there, different, but he is there, and that gives us all strength.”
The family lives on a large property in Gland (Switzerland). “We live together at home, we do therapy, we do everything so that Michael feels better and does well and that he simply feels our family solidarity,” says Corinna Schumacher.
In addition to his closest family circle, Schumi is only allowed to visit a few confidants, such as ex-Ferrari team boss Jean Todt (78). However, some of Schumacher’s former environment no longer saw him. His former manager Willi Weber, for example. He said a year ago: “When I think about Michael now, unfortunately I no longer have any hope of seeing him again.” To this day, Weber blames himself: “I should have visited Michael in the hospital.”
Unlikely. The family has been hermetically shielding him since the accident – from fans and the media. “It was always about protecting private matters,” explained the Schumacher family’s media lawyer, Felix Damm, in an interview with the “Legal Tribune Online” in October 2023.
“Michael has always protected us, now we protect Michael,” says Schumacher’s wife Corinna in the Netflix documentary. In it, the family with Corinna, Mick and his sister Gina give for the first time an insight into how they lived together after the accident.