Posted on 12/29/2013 9:29:04 PM PST by smokingfrog
Michael Schumacher, the seven-time Formula 1 champion, is in a critical condition after a skiing accident, says the French hospital treating him.
The 44-year-old German suffered serious brain trauma, was in a coma on arrival and underwent a brain operation.
He was skiing off-piste with his son in the French Alps on Sunday when the accident occurred.
Schumacher was wearing a helmet when he fell and hit his head against a rock, his manager Sabine Kehm said.
Early reports had said his condition was not life-threatening and he reportedly walked away from the accident complaining only of feeling a bit shaken.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Hope it's not another case of "Talk and Die", as happened with Natasha Richardson.
The next update on Schumacher’s condition would be given at 1000 GMT on Monday, a hospital spokesman said.
skiing off-piste
Sure that does not mean he was skiing while pissed drunk or mad.
Forgive me, never been skiing and live in the tropics...................All those trendy french skiing phrases are gibberish to me.
Sounds like it was probably an epidural hematoma given the lucid interval.
Ian
I had to look it up...
Backcountry skiing, also called off-piste skiing, is skiing in the backcountry on ungroomed and unmarked slopes or pistes, including skiing in unmarked or unpatrolled areas either inside or outside of a ski resort’s boundaries, sometimes in the woods. Unlike groomed cross-country and alpine skiing, the land and the snow pack are not monitored, patrolled, or maintained.
“Backcountry skiing, also called off-piste skiing, is skiing in the backcountry on ungroomed and unmarked slopes or pistes, including skiing in unmarked or ...”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backcountry_skiing
Learn something new every day..
Up here in Washington State we generally have 1, 2 or a handful of deaths each year involving downhill skiing off the trail. Besides hitting rocks or trees or falling off cliffs, one of the biggest hazards is falling head first into a “tree hole” in the snow. This is the area on the leeward side of the tree trunk which is a void in the snow. Upside down in the hole, suffocating and suspended by the skis at the top, with cinched down bindings that didn’t release, has been fatal more than once.
No thanks, bashing my brains out whilst freezing does not appeal................
Skiers warned not to go off-piste as Alps resorts put on high avalanche risk
Authorities frustrated that many ignore warnings despite a string of recent deaths
The Alpine Prefecture have warned of “a high risk of avalanches occurring spontaneously or triggered by skiers at all resorts in the Alps”
GMT 28 Dec 2013
Skiers were on Saturday warned to exercise extreme caution after a series of deadly avalanches across resorts in the Alps claimed seven lives in just two days.
authorities warned that the current conditions are particularly conducive to triggering avalanches.
An avalanche risk of four to five (out of a maximum five) is expected to remain in place for the next few days and skiers and snowboarders have been warned to stick to marked slopes rather than venturing off-piste.
Avalanches kill an average of 30 people a year in France alone.
“Learn something new every day..”
Around here we certainly do. lol!
As steve86 mentions happens sometimes, could also unmarked graves.
Off the groomed runs, potentially into the trees within the ski area and then into non-avalanche controlled areas outside the ski area.
At least I will die warm............
I thought of that too. What a shame for that poor woman.
And her poor mother, Vanessa Redgrave, whom I’m usually happy to hate, lost her daughter Natasha in 2009 and then her brother and sister the following year. All 3 far too young to die.
I lost my mother and brother 14 months apart, throw my kid in there too and I’m UNDER the bed with a bottle of whiskey.
Of course skill is difficult to earn and strongly associated downstream with equipment choices.
Luck? How much prep have you done?
another skier cut him off ... sending him to the wall?
Tough situation. Keep the bottle to a miniature.
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