“Very severe cardiac arrhythmia”
Ski star makes heart operation public
12/15/2025 – 7:57 a.mReading time: 2 minutes
He is one of Austria’s top performers. Now Franz-Josef Rehrl surprised everyone by talking about his heart surgery.
He is one of the best Nordic combined athletes. Now Franz-Josef Rehrl surprised with a confession. The Austrian almost ended his sporting career in the summer because he had to undergo heart surgery.
The 32-year-old told the ORF program “Sport am Sonntag für Licht ins Dunkel”: “I had a very serious cardiac arrhythmia, which we had fixed at the university clinic in Innsbruck.”
Rehrl explained that his pulse shot up to 240 under stress. Unhealthy, not normal and untypical for an athlete. Rehrl called the reaction a “short circuit” in his body. However, the father of the family also said: “It sounds worse than it is, but fortunately it has been fixed.”
The combined athlete is now back in the World Cup and has already achieved two podium places this Olympic season. In Trondheim in Norway he came second once and also third. In Ruka in Finland, Franz-Josef Rehrl finished sixth twice.
Next February the Olympic Games will take place in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. The Nordic Combined will also take place then. However, only men and not women are allowed to compete there. Since 2020, women’s competitions have only taken place in Nordic combined.
Nathalie Armbruster told “Eurosport”: “It really, really hurts. But above all you realize that women still don’t have equal rights in the 21st century. That’s a huge mess.”
However, the Nordic combined could be completely removed from the program in the future, and the men around Rehrl would then no longer be able to compete. The reason: The IOC demands clear equality between men and women for the 2030 Games. Since this is not the case in Nordic combined, it could be tight.