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| October 30, 2001 | Tuesday | Shaba'an 12, 1422 |
World super-G champion fighting for her life
VIENNA, Oct 29: France’s world super-G champion Regine Cavagnoud was fighting for her life on Monday after suffering severe head and internal injuries in a training crash in Austria.
“One can say that her condition is life-threatening and remains so. She is very, very badly injured,” Michael Blauth, head of the emergency unit at Innsbruck University hospital, told Reuters. “She has severe brain injuries.”
Asked about her survival chances, Blauth said: “The expression ‘life-threatening’ sums up her situation at present.”
Cavagnoud, who was a surprise third at the season-opening giant slalom in Soelden on Saturday, rammed into a trainer on the Pitz Valley glacier and suffered serious internal injuries.
“We’re doing all we can from the medical side to help her, but it’s a question of what happens in the next hours and days,” Blauth said.
Cavagnoud was still undergoing emergency surgery, he added.
Benoit Fritsch, media coordinator for the French ski federation, said the 31-year-old from La Clusaz was flown to Innsbruck with German trainer Markus Anwander after the crash.
Cavagnoud collided with Anwander, as he crossed the track, after coming off a jump.
Blauth said that Anwander was also battling for his life, although his condition was more stable than Cavagnoud’s.
Austria’s APA news agency said that according to Philippe Auer, racing manager at Cavagnoud’s ski supplier Salomon, the Frenchwoman had temporary heart failure before a trainer massaged her heart back to life.
Auer said Cavagnoud suffered broken ribs, which in turn injured her liver and lungs. She also broke her arm and suffered concussion.
Austria’s Ulrike Maier broke her neck and died when she lost control and crashed during a World Cup downhill in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany in 1994.
Her compatriot Gernot Reinstadler died when he broke his pelvis and suffered massive internal injuries in a crash during training for a World Cup downhill in Wengen in 1991.
Monday’s accident on the Tyrolean glacier was similar to one in downhill training at the 1996 world championships in Sierra Nevada when Russia’s Tatjana Lebedeva collided with a FIS representative.
Cavagnoud’s third place in the World Cup giant slalom on Saturday was a surprise since she had just come back from an injury in training in Chile on August 17 when she sustained minor concussion and partially tore her left ankle ligament.
She had resumed training only last month. Her strong showing in giant slalom was all the more impressive since she is more at home in the speed events of downhill and super-G.
The crash in Tyrol’s Pitz Valley comes at the beginning of a season when the Frenchwoman — who works as a customs officer — hoped she would for once be spared any injuries.
Her gold medal in the super-G in St Anton in February came at the end of an injury-free season, but she crashed again in training in Chile in August.
She took long years to blossom because of countless health problems in her career, even in the junior ranks.
Between 1987 and 1990, when she was close to making the French A team, she was sidelined from competition for almost three years after tearing ligaments in both knees.
She recovered and obtained her first convincing result at the Albertville Olympics in 1992 when she finished 10th in the combined.
A year later, she scored her first two World Cup podiums in at the age of 23. But the reprieve was short-lived as she fell in training in Lillehammer at the 1994 Olympics and suffered a back injury.
It took five years before she collected her first World Cup laurels by winning a downhill in Cortina in February 1999. But hard luck struck again as she crashed in training for the world championships in Vail two years ago.
Cavagnoud had set her sights high for the current Alpine skiing season after finishing third in the overall World Cup standings last winter.
France’s best contender for a medal at the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City in February, Cavagnoud said in an interview with Reuters last week that she would not make the Olympics her main objective.
“I want to make it there with as many results, podiums and victories as possible under my belt. This way I would have no doubts and I would feel the same way as I did before the world championships,” she said in reference to St Anton.
“This season in the World Cup, I want to be around in both the downhill and the Super-G.”—Reuters
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