Comatose speed-demon Schumacher in struggle of his life
Loved ones bank on his extreme fitness
The greatest Formula One driver of his generation turned 45 in France on Friday, hundreds of his Ferrari-clad, banner-waving fans standing vigil in encouragement outside the University Hospital of Grenoble, where he lay in a medically induced coma.
Michael Schumacher has lived most of his adult life at high speed, taking calculated risks to push the envelope of whatever has caught his fancy — no matter its horsepower or number of wheels, whether it be in an organized racing league or a solitary endeavour.
Seven times a Formula One world champion and seven times the winner of the Can- adian Grand Prix — both records — Schumacher suffered life-threatening brain trauma last Sunday when he crashed on a ski slope in the shadow of his chalet in Méribel, in the French Alps.
On Friday, perhaps no news was good news — neither the Schumacher family nor the medical specialists tending to him released an update on his condition, said to be stable but still critical following surgery Sunday and again Monday.
There is no prognosis for his recovery; this is all day by day, hour by hour, but those closest to the legendary racer believe his supreme fitness will be of huge benefit in the long run.
Meanwhile, news reports Friday detailed a more complicated picture than what had circulated all week, stories claiming that a reckless, thrill-seeking Schumacher had crashed into a rockstrewn area between two marked pistes.
Sabine Kehm, who for 14 years has worked with Schu- macher to handle his overflowing public- and mediarelations schedules, was reported by The Guardian to say that Schumacher was not, in fact, skiing at high speed.
Rather, Kehm said, he had shortly before his accident pushed off between the Biche and Mauduit pistes, having stopped in the area to help a friend’s daughter who had taken a spill.
It was then, Kehm said, that Schumacher’s skis hit a rock hidden by snow, propelling him headfirst into another rock so violently that his helmet was split by the impact.
Appearing dazed and confused, Schumacher was quickly airlifted to a hospital in nearby Moutiers. But his condition deteriorated rapidly and he was transferred to the Grenoble facility, a world leader in brain-trauma injuries, and emergency surgery was performed on Sunday to relieve pressure on his swelling brain.
It has been 30 years since Schumacher was crowned Germany’s junior karting champion, setting him on course for what would be an unparalleled career at the elite level of global motorsport.
It was 20 years ago this summer that he won his first of seven Canadian Grand Prix, sprinting from pole position to the checkered flag for Benetton-Ford in his third of 18 career races in Montreal.
Schumacher was as dominant in that race as he would become on the Formula One circuit, winning the 1994 event on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with Williams runner-up Damon Hill nearly 40 seconds in his mirrors.
If there was any concern during his wire-to-wire victory, the seventh of 91 he would score in his 308 Grand Prix races, Schumacher said it was fleeting:
“There was one time when I was faster by a second a lap,” he said after the race. “Then all of a sudden, I was only faster by 2-10ths. I said to myself, ‘(Expletive), what is happening?’ ”
Nothing serious, as it turned out. Schumacher stickhandled effortlessly through lapped traffic, which clogged the road for his pursuers.
Only at the start, when the German was the meat in a Jean Alesi-Gerhard Berger Ferrari sandwich at the Senna Corner, was there a skipped heartbeat. But Schumacher pulled away cleanly and roared up the back side of the track in the lead to motor 69 laps untouched, the first of five times he would start from the pole in Montreal.
At age 25, this was Schumi’s 44th career Grand Prix, his 23rd of 155 career podium finishes.
Four times in Montreal, he had the fastest lap of the race. Twelve times, he stood on the podium.
Only twice in 18 starts did Schumacher fail to finish — a driveshaft flew out of his Ferrari exiting the pits in 1996, not a good thing; and the rear wing on his Mercedes jammed open in the DRS passing zone in 2012, his final race in Montreal, an engineer in the pits pounding on the wing with a decidedly low-tech gloved fist in a futile bit to repair it.
It wasn’t the Schumacher of old that his fans saw in his final three races here, his very average Mercedes not helping his comeback after a three-year retirement. He placed 11th in 2010, a tantalizing fourth the next year, then failed to finish in his 2012 finale.
Always, Schumi made no secret of his love of Montreal and the ambience of this city, even if its often processional races weren’t the greatest racing show on Earth.
He often arrived early and headed up north for a brief country holiday before getting down to business on Île Notre-Dame, and he raved about walking around Montreal without being hounded by fans — though he was instantly recognized — as he would be in Europe or Asia.
Schumacher has his supporters in this town. Many dislike him intensely, too, particularly for his days dicing with hometown hero Jacques Villeneuve, even playing high-speed demolition derby with JV during the latter’s charge to the 1997 world championship.
Schumi could be friendly and engaging one minute, but brusque and pompous the next.
In short, not unlike many performers who are the greatest on the planet at what they do while focusing every fibre of their being at getting better still.
But no matter the mood of the Schumacher I saw covering 13 of his 18 races here, beginning with his third Canadian GP win (his first Montreal title for Ferrari) in 1997, he often was my best column. He was a compelling story on the track or as he strode purposefully through the paddock, fans’ jaws dropping as quickly as he walked.
That 1997 win was Schumacher’s 50th career podium. Five years later on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, he earned Ferrari its 150th Formula One victory en route to his third of five world championships for the prancing horse, following a pair with Benetton.
Somehow, a Schumacher thread was stitched into most everything I wrote when he was part of the silly-fast F1 circus, a note usually gleaned with Gazette colleague Walter Buchignani as we traditionally camped out at the espresso machine in the Ferrari paddock.
In Grenoble on Friday, Sabine Kehm continued to handle the insatiable demands for information on her friend and boss who lay critically injured in a hospital.
In 2002, I wrote a feature on the former German journalist about her management of the days in Montreal of Schumacher, who here and everywhere else was at once regal, rock star and screen idol.
The day we spoke, Schumi wore a new pair of cowboy boots to a tire company’s elaborate news conference. Kehm would take an afternoon call to meticulously describe to a European reporter the boots’ colour.
“I’m not surprised by this,” she said, snapping her cellphone shut. “I could have told them the size, had they asked.”
In her 2003 book Schumacher: The Official Inside Story of the Formula One Icon, Kehm wrote of her boss’s oft-stated wish, an impossible dream given his life:
“He would like to be invisible, to be unobserved. There are people who enjoy being looked at. Michael Schumacher is not one of them.”
For now, the cameras have been sealed off from the close-up view. But that gaze is unrelenting from a distance as the greatest race-car driver of modern times, one who for seven summers owned Montreal, continues the most challenging fight of his life.