Although initial reports stated that Schumacher's injuries were not life threatening, the Grenoble hospital treating Schumacher reported at 10pm on Sunday night that the former Ferrari and Mercedes driver's condition had worsened and is now regarded as 'critical'.

A statement from the University Hospital of Grenoble, distributed by Schumacher's management company on Sunday night, confirmed the 44-year-old was in a coma.

"Mr Schumacher was admitted to the University Hospital of Grenoble at 12:40pm, following a skiing accident which occurred in Meribel in the late morning," the statement said.

"He suffered a severe head injury with coma on arrival, which required immediate neurosurgical intervention. He remains in a critical situation."

Carole Bouchard of L'Equipe newspaper told Sky Sports News: "It seems like his condition has deteriorated in the evening, because they are now saying he is in a coma because of maybe a brain hemorrhage so his condition is really critical and his life is in jeopardy.

"Professor Saillant who is a close personal friend of his and very well-known specialist and surgeon, attended to him. His family is there to, but people are getting more and more worried.

"They are still investigating exactly what happened as it is still not clear. The response was quick - six minutes, maybe ten at most - before they airlifted him to the nearest hospital. Then when it became clear he was deteriorating they moved him again."

Germany in shock
Sandra Baumgartner of Sky Deutschland told Sky Sports News: "Everyone is looking to France and looking to the news. People are shocked. Because ok, he was in an accident, in hospital, but in the early afternoon it was not that serious. Now it's about his life. People are really, really shocked. Everyone is keeping their fingers crossed."

The accident happened while the 44-year-old was skiing in the French resort of Meribel in the popular Three Valleys area.

He was wearing a helmet when he hit his head on a rock.

Schumacher's spokeswoman confirmed: "Michael fell on his head when he was on a private skiing trip in the French Alps.

"He was taken to hospital and is receiving professional medical attention. We ask for understanding that we cannot give out continuous information about his health.

"He was wearing a helmet and was not alone. No one else was involved in the fall."

As news of Schumacher's condition became apparant on Sunday night, Sky F1 commentator David Croft tweeted: "Seen Michael Schumacher win plenty of great battles in his career this, the most important of all. Like all in F1, praying he pulls through."

His colleague Martin Brundle tweeted: "Come on Michael, give us one of those race stints at pure qualifying pace to win through, like you used to. You can do it."

Source: Michael Schumacher 'critical' and in a coma after skiing accident | Ferrari News | Formula 1 Teams | Sky Sports

 

I had the pleasure of seeing this man race in his last season with Mercedes AMG Petronas.

 

I have been following this as well. He was skiing off trail ( not groomed or maintained, could have rock outcropings, avalanch issues) in one of the most difficult sections of the mountain. He is an expert skier so this is the type of terrain he would seek out. Sounds like it was just incredibally rotten luck that he fell in a section and hit rock.

I hope he can make a full recovery.

 

+1, one of the greatest F1 drivers of all time!

 

LONDON — Doctors treating Michael Schumacher for the brain injuries he sustained in a skiing accident in the French Alps said Tuesday that there was “a slight improvement” in his condition after an overnight operation. But they said the 44-year-old former grand prix driver, the most successful in the century-long history of the sport, remained in critical condition, with extensive blood clots in his brain that were inaccessible to further surgery.

The two-hour operation at a hospital in the French city of Grenoble, the second surgical procedure since Schumacher’s accident on Sunday, was undertaken to remove a large hematoma, or blood clot, on the left outer side of his brain, the opposite side to Sunday’s surgery, the doctors said.

The second operation, begun at 10 p.m. on Monday, had achieved “a relatively good result,” they said, removing the hematoma and somewhat lowering the pressures within Schumacher’s brain, leaving him in a “relatively stable” condition.

But Dr. Jean-Francois Payen, a member of the surgical team, said that Schumacher, a seven-time winner of the world drivers’ championship in Formula One, remained in a critical condition. It could be days or weeks, he said, if Schumacher survives, before any assessment could be made about whether he had suffered any permanent brain damage when he skied at high speed into a rock on a snowfield at the resort of Méribel, close to the Swiss and Italian borders with France.

“We can’t say he is out of danger,” Dr. Payen said, “but we have gained a bit of time.”

The French doctor, an anesthesiologist, said that “the coming hours are still critical” for Schumacher, and that the remaining hematomas, described as being widely spread through his brain and too deep to be reached by surgery, meant that it was impossible for the medical team to predict any outcome.

“Things can change very quickly, in a bad way or a good way,” he said.

At a news conference at the Grenoble University Hospital Center, the medical team said the decision to operate a second time, following the emergency operation to relieve pressure on his brain as soon as Schumacher arrived at the hospital by helicopter about 90 minutes after his accident, had been had undertaken with the consent of his family.

Schumacher’s wife, Corinna, and his two teenage children, Gina-Maria, 16, and Mick, 14, have been at his bedside since the hours immediately after the accident.

Many in the racing world turned to the question of how Schumacher could suffer such serious head injuries while engaging in one of his family pastimes after surviving a career spanning 21 years in Formula One, a sport where speeds of 200 miles an hour are common. His most serious racing injury was a broken leg sustained in a crash in his Ferrari in 1999.

One account, on the front page of The Times of London, was that Schumacher, whose 45th birthday falls on Friday, would have had to have been skiing at between 60 and 100 kilometers an hour — equivalent to between 37 and 62 miles an hour — when he struck the rock. The account quoted unidentified sources in Grenoble as saying the fact that his helmet split on impact indicated that he would have had to be traveling at very high speed, a conclusion that appeared to gain support from the medical team, which described the impact as having been “very violent.”

Resort officials at Méribel said Schumacher, who has a chalet nearby, had been skiing with his son in an off-trail area between two of the resort’s main ski runs when he fell and struck his head on the rock. On Sunday, the officials said, the snowfall in parts of the snowfield was unusually shallow, with some of larger rocks covered with a thin dusting of snow that could have deceived him.

At Tuesday’s news conference, doctors said Schumacher would remain in a medically induced coma — a common treatment in cases of severe head injury — for the immediate future and possibly much longer, with hour-by-hour assessments of the degree to which the swelling of the brain was receding.

Some of Schumacher’s rivals from his Formula One years said that they considered it unsurprising that he would have chosen a style of skiing that emphasized speed, daring and agility. As a driver, Schumacher was known for his aggressive, win-at-all-costs style, and had a history of on- and off-track confrontations with other drivers.

Apart from the 1999 accident in which he broke his leg, he emerged unscathed from several other high-speed crashes. In this, he was a beneficiary, like other drivers, from the vastly improved safety measures in Formula One, many of them adopted after the fatal accident involving the Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna at the Imola track in Italy in May 1994.

Schumacher, then challenging Senna for supremacy in the sport, was running immediately behind Senna when the Brazilian veered off the track.

There has been no fatality in Formula One since.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/sp...tml?ref=sports

 

Good article with pics showing where Schumacher went, the rocks he hit, and a good explanation of his injuries.

Michael Schumacher still fighting for life after hitting FOUR rocks in ski accident | Mail Online