Yes, my God. Everything is half as wild. The “Kreuzbanderl” hats ripped him, the Inner and the outer meniscus as well. And the “Innenbanderl”. The cartilage was destroyed. The right knee: a pile of debris. Yes mei. What the heck? Nothing helps Yes. What happened, happened, so the Thomas Dressen says.

it Happened a year ago, in the downhill at Beaver Creek. A wave, a little stuttering, a violent blow on the knee, the departure into the net. There he was, the great newcomer of the preceding winter, the surprise winner of Kitzbuehel, 2018, helpless in the snow.

The brutal stab to the knee, the concentration had blown away, the fall was uncontrolled, he shot with the right Arm in the pimple hard slopes, the shoulder, squeezing it to the rear and out of the socket. “Luckily”, he finds, were not the pain in my knee almost unbearable, he realized that this would be further up there is just as great.

Dressen is trying to come up with the right Arm to the left shoulder, but is stuck. So he pulls up the left shoulder, pulls you down – “zack,” he says, she was back in it. “And stupid as I am, I want to see if she is really in it circles with the Arm and …” Carefully: zack, she’s back outside. He will continue to rotate until it is again dislocated.

In the Form of his life

Now, Dressen sitting in a deep armchair in the Foyer of the Hotels the Chateau in Lake Louise. Chandeliers hang from the ceiling, a big fir, with North American slope, decorated to all sorts of Sparkle, in the middle of the room. It is the place where the speed driver will give you the first rendezvous of the season. And Dressen in there is again in the middle.

He tells of the accident in Detail, and yet he beckons again and again – Yes mei, the other does but much harder. The 26 could rag-Year-old well, he was but at the time, at the end of November 2018, in the Form of his life. But Dressen is no one who looks back, it has helped him quite often. Once more he looked at his fall, on the day of the accident, “the complete equal to”. Then it went to the planning of the Rehabilitation.

He toiled in the weight room, struggled recently on the slopes in Chile and Canada for the return. The biggest Problem: the head. He was no longer accustomed to the pace. “I’ve been thinking too slowly,” says Dressen. Jump, curve, shaft and head came. “I was in Stress, has been passive, because I was no longer master of the situation.” With each run it got better. And on Saturday, after two respectable training, he won the race in a miraculous way to his second world Cup.

Yes, mei, my God, there are worse things – it is not spoken only in this way, therefore, Dressen. The native Bavarian, lives with his girlfriend in upper Austria, scharnstein, has experienced very different.

The was 44 on the helmet

In the fall of 2005, Dressen eleven and to the Skischool Neustift in Austria, his father died. Dirk Dressen, once a biathlete and, later, skiing instructors, had traveled with a group of children to Sölden, sat in a gondola, as the ropeway is a 750-pound concrete bucket from a helicopter and broke it with eight other people in attendance.

The helmet of his son, the number 44 emblazoned today, for the fourth letter of the alphabet, DD, the initials of his father. He often think of him, says Thomas Dressen. But the way he went further, he made only for himself, not in memory of his father, who was his first sponsor. “I wouldn’t do that for someone else, I would lose me at some point.”

Of pop on the slopes

Shortly after the death of his father, the Horror experienced Dressen on the slopes. He slammed into another skier, suffered a skull fracture, a zygomatic fracture of the upper jaw was smashed to pieces – “as it is to Pointed and button,” he says. Wouldn’t be brain fluid leaked, and he knows, whether he would still be there, and if so, in what condition. “Luckily, I had some breaks,” he says, “as a result, the pressure could escape.”

The young boy had trouble concentrating in school, “the short-term memory was completely gone”. Today it happens to him that he was in a conversation a number of times the same question, weather changes, he feels, the left side of his face is slightly numb.

The question was never whether, but when, he would return to the track. Dressen moved to the Skigymnasium Saalfelden, was one of the most Talented, won the giant slalom and downhill silver at the Junior world Championships. In January 2015, with 21, he debuted in the world Cup.

And now he’s back after a year break, as one of the greatest figures in the downhill circus – singing in the streets as before. He says: “It can happen anywhere, something I can slip on the stairs or in the shower. But of course, We have a higher risk, we are looking for the adrenaline, to the Limit, we try to push the boundaries, faster, always faster. Yes: Then the risk increases.” But, says he, “that’s why I would make me never question whether or not I should stop. The only reasons would be: I have no Fun anymore. I’m not competitive. Or I’m seriously injured.”

Thomas Dressen would probably deal with that.

Created: 30.11.2019, 12:00 PM