IT was a sunny Alpine morning as Michael Schumacher and his son Mick emerged, ten years ago this week, from their luxury chalet ready to take on the mountains.
For a man who had been the king of speed in Formula One, the ski slopes offered the greatest racing driver of his generation another chance of an exhilarating adrenaline rush.
An accomplished skier, the retired seven-times world champion, 44, and his 14-year-old son set off on the Combe de Saulire ski run in the exclusive French resort of Meribel.
Footage from the German driver’s helmet camera revealed he was not travelling at excessive speed for his abilities yet, moments later, his skis struck a rock partly concealed beneath fresh snow and catapulted him 3.5 metres (11.5ft) head first on to a second boulder.
The impact of the collision, shortly after 11am on December 29, 2013 was so intense that it split his helmet in two and left him in a coma for 250 days.
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Now his younger brother Ralf has admitted the F1 legend may never completely recover, despite receiving advanced medical treatment.
He said: “Nothing is like it used to be.”
Ralf, who also raced and won six F1 Grands Prix, told German outlet Bild this week: “Life is unfair at times.
"That day held a lot of bad luck. This fate has changed our family.”
He added: “Michael wasn’t only my brother.
"When we were kids he was also my coach and mentor. He taught me everything about kart racing.
“There may be an age gap of seven years but he was always by my side.”
Yesterday Michael’s F1 pal Perry McCarthy, the man behind Top Gear’s original mystery character The Stig, said his fate was “desperately cruel”, adding: “It’s incredible that someone so special can be so badly hurt while skiing.
“It’s so cruel that Michael happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Perry told sports betting website OLBG: “Nobody knows exactly what Michael would have gone on to do, but my feeling is that he’d have done something for humanity.
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“I feel he had that capacity, and I think he would have retained his love for F1, but he would have realised that there are much bigger things in life and he had the opportunity to change things.”
Airlifted to hospital, Michael had two life-saving operations to remove blood clots from his brain.
Doctors later said if it had not been for his headgear, he would have died instantly.
Michael, who is married to Corinna, 54, was placed in a medically induced coma to try to reduce the swelling.
In the decade that has followed, the F1 superstar has not been seen in public and health updates have been irregular.
Into this void has come un-founded rumour and conjecture.
His family has remained largely silent about his condition and access is given only to those closest to him.
Michael’s former Ferrari colleague Luca Badoer, one of those allowed regular visits, revealed: “Only a few people are allowed to visit.
“Corinna decides who is allowed to see him.
"The family wants to maintain a sort of secrecy about this and I respect their will.
"They do all this for the good of Michael.”
Mick, now 24 and the spitting image of his dad, has described his father as his “idol” and “role model”.
He, too, is a racing driver, who competed in F1 for Haas before losing his seat for the 2023 season to Nico Hulkenberg.
In 2024 he will move to the World Endurance Championship, where his dad competed with Sauber-Mercedes before making his grand prix debut in 1991, to race for Alpine.
In July fans were reduced to tears when Mick drove Michael’s Mercedes at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex while wearing his dad’s iconic red helmet and race suit.
Mick said at the time: “It’s going to be spectacular to run, in my dad’s 2011 car, the W02 — even if it is only a short run.”
Cashing in on the public sympathy for Michael, in April, a German magazine ran a tasteless AI-generated “interview” with the stricken driver.
Die Aktuelle’s front cover showed a photo of him smiling, with a headline promising, “Michael Schumacher, the first interview”.
But in fact the chat was written with an artificial intelligence tool.
The family threatened legal action and Die Aktuelle’s editor was sacked.
Named sport’s first billionaire by Euro-business magazine, Michael revolutionised the pinnacle of motor racing.
Born with seemingly superhuman coordination and spatial awareness, he honed his physique to handle the G-force stress on his body in races.
When cornering and braking, a driver’s head, plus helmet, effectively weighs almost half as much as their entire body.
So Michael designed a cockpit-shaped exercise machine that attached to his helmet, which he used for hour after hour.
At the time of his retirement in 2012 he held records for the most F1 wins (91), pole positions (68) and podium finishes (155).
Born to working-class parents in Hurth, West Germany, he won his first karting championship aged six.
Making his F1 debut in 1991, he went on to land seven drivers’ titles, a record equalled by Sir Lewis Hamilton in 2020.
Away from the track — where he was described as a “perfectionist” — Michael was, according to manager Sabine Kehm, “devoted to his family”.
In 1995 he wed champion equestrian and animal rights activist Corinna Betsch.
They had children Gina-Maria in 1997 and son Mick in 1999.
Shunning the celebrity limelight, the family lived in a newly built mansion with a private beach on Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
They also own a horse ranch in Switzerland and another in Texas.
Michael once described his marriage as “total harmony”, adding: “We have the same vision of how we want to spend our lives.”
In April 2014, three months after Michael was placed in a coma, manager Sabine revealed he was showing “moments of consciousness and awakening”.
Though still being treated in intensive care at Grenoble Hospital, he was said to be “making progress”.
There followed another period of silence about Michael’s condition, then a fresh statement in June 2014 revealed he was no longer in a coma.
His “long phase of rehabilitation” continued at the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland.
In September that year it emerged Michael had been transferred to his home beside Lake Geneva.
Manager Sabine said: “Henceforth, Michael’s rehabilitation will take place at his home.
"Considering the severe injuries that he suffered, progress has been made in the past weeks and months.”
And she pleaded for speculation about his health to be “avoided”.
Two months later a friend of Michael’s offered a glimpse into his condition.
Wheelchair user and former racing driver Philippe Streiff, who had visited Michael in hospital, said: “He is getting better but everything is relative.
"It’s very difficult.
“He can’t speak. Like me, he is in a wheelchair, paralysed.
“He has memory problems and speech problems.”
Further updates were not forthcoming and the family dealt with their anguish privately, while strongly protecting his privacy.
Then in May 2015 Sabine provided an update, revealing Michael’s condition was improving “considering the severeness of the injury he had”.
That Christmas, German magazine Bunte reported that he could manage some steps with the help of therapists and could now raise an arm.
It proved a false hope for his fans. The family sued Bunte, their lawyer telling a court Michael “cannot walk”.
Then, in 2017, his former long-term manager Willi Weber made an extraordinary intervention, telling a German newspaper: “I find it very unfortunate that Michael’s fans do not know about his health.
“Why are they not being told the truth?”
Two years later Jean Todt, Michael’s former boss at Ferrari and one of his closest confidantes, gave a rare update, revealing that they watched F1 races together on television.
“Michael is in the best hands and is well looked after in his house,” Jean said.
“He does not give up and keeps fighting.”
Yet his precise physical and mental state remained shrouded in secrecy.
In 2021, Corinna broke her silence to talk about her husband in a TV documentary.
She revealed during an emotional interview: “I miss Michael every day. It’s not just me who misses him, everybody misses Michael.
"But Michael is here — different, but here.
“He still shows me how strong he is, every day.”
During the Netflix documentary, called simply Schumacher, she added: “We are trying to carry on as a family, the way Michael liked it and still does.
“We live together at home. We do therapy.
“We do everything we can to make Michael better and to make sure he’s comfortable.”
Like his mother, Mick has maintained a steadfast silence over precise details of his father’s health.
In that 2021 documentary, Corinna provided an emotional rebuff to those who had accused the family of unnecessary secrecy.
Corinna revealed of her husband: “We are getting on with our lives — ‘Private is private’, as he always said.
“Michael always protected us, now we are protecting Michael."
