Ten months after his serious fall in the Altenberg ice track, bobsleigh pusher Sandro Michel made serious allegations against the operators of the track and the world association IBSF and described details of his martyrdom.
The Swiss was thrown from the sled during four-man bobsleigh training in Altenberg on February 13th. As a result, the bob overturned in the lower part of the track and slid on its side into the ascending finish area, but then back out of control and hit Michel, who was on the track. The team led by German pilot Johannes Lochner had previously fallen during the same training session.
“You should have reacted immediately afterwards. That’s my biggest point of criticism,” Michel told “Sport Bild”. “I think it’s very weak that nothing was changed. Two or three people would have been enough to take me off the track, or one person to take care of the sled.”
After the fall, the Dresden public prosecutor’s office briefly became involved, but decided in mid-March not to carry out any further investigations into negligence. The incident was therefore classified as an accident – a circumstance that also upset Michel.
“I found that a bit disappointing, I have to be honest. The circumstances were special. They interviewed me the day after the accident. To this day I don’t remember the content of the interview. You can’t really evaluate what I said anyway “The case was closed without properly questioning me afterwards,” said the 28-year-old.
The third place in the 2023 World Cup has no memory of his own fall. “I assume that I was unconscious after being hit by the sled and flew out.”
Bob: Michel “cut open” by the sleigh
As he slid back, the sled probably “caught him with an edge that then tore me open and cut me open,” said Michel. “The wound was 35 by 50 centimeters. I think you only see that in war. The leg was almost gone! It was just hanging on skin and muscle strands. My luck was that the nerves and blood vessels weren’t damaged because These are on the inside of the leg. Otherwise I would have been gone in a short time.”
There were also other serious injuries, including 14 broken ribs. The bobsleigh star had to undergo surgery three times.
Shortly after the accident, Michel’s pilot Michael Vogt also expressed his lack of understanding of the lack of safety precautions.
“I have the feeling that something like this shouldn’t happen, that a sled slips back on the track,” said Vogt to “SRF”. However, this has “already happened in the past” in Altenberg, Vogt explained. Nevertheless, nothing was done.
Vogt himself suffered a concussion in the fall.