REMARKABLE SPORTING RETURNS

BEN HOGAN

Badly injured in car crash in 1949, the American golfer came back to win the US Open the next year at Merion. Hogan suffered a fractured pelvis, collarbone, ankle, chipped ribs and near-fatal blood clots in the head-on collision with a Greyhound bus, but amazingly he returned to the course 11 months later.

NIKI LAUDA

Given the last rites after injuries he sustained in an horrific fireball crash in the 1976 German Grand Prix, the Austrian Formula One driver was racing again just six weeks later at the Italian Grand Prix. He went on to become world champion the following year.

PETRA KVITOVA

Warned she may never play tennis again after having the tendons of her racket hand severed by an intruder’s knife in her house in December 2016, she returned to the sport and won the Aegon Classic in Birmingham last summer. The Czech is now in the world’s top 10 after back-to-back wins in St Petersburg and Qatar.