Niklas Bachsleitner knew it straight away: It's the knee.
Yet again.
He's right.
For the second time, the ski crosser tears his cruciate ligament.
Now, of all times, when things are going so well.
Grainau
- An unfortunate decision, instinctively made by the opponent in a split second, and the wave of success on which ski crosser Niklas Bachsleitner (SC Partenkirchen) last surfed was suddenly over.
Now the 24-year-old is back in the trough of the second cruciate ligament tear and has to, no, wants to fight his way back to Comeback 3.0.
When Bachsleitner came to rest over the three-meter high step-down kicker after his departure, he immediately threw away his ski pole and grabbed his knee.
While the helpers, doctor and paramedics were still frantically jumping around him, checking his eyes and asking about awareness, headache and memory, the Grainauer had long known that something completely different was his problem.
"I felt the dull thud when landing after the first wave, long before I slid over the step-down."
Skicrosser Bachsleitner doesn't blame anyone
Bachsleitner had a duel with Reece Howden, Marc Bischofsberger and team-mate Tobias Müller in the quarter-finals of the World Cup on the Reiteralm (Styria).
"I was on four and had no stress," says the 24-year-old, who got into a real flow this winter and often only started the decisive maneuver shortly before the finish line.
"I invested in the negative curve, came out high and was able to slip into the double slipstream of Müller and Bischofsberger." With the speed gained in this way, he would have at least one of the two or even both on the straight line with its waves before the step-down can overtake.
But then Müller's fatal decision followed.
He drove on Bischofberger and dodged to the right in the direction of his team mate.
“It's an instinctive decision, and logically you always protect yourself first,” says Bachsleitner.
"Certainly it could have been solved more elegantly, but I can't blame him." Bachsleitner had to swerve to the right in order not to collide with Müller, couldn't push the following wave in time and took off uncontrollably.
On landing his right knee came up in the worst possible position for a cruciate ligament.
It had already happened.
The following fall, in which he twisted his left knee, slipped over the kicker and hit the impact protection mat, looked spectacular and painful, but did not cause any damage.
“In the situation your body reacts automatically.
It means: open your eyes and catch them as well as possible. "
Skicrosser Bachsleitner: "I didn't want to know how the knee feels when you get up"
At first, the sports policeman wasn't lying there because of the pain, but “because I just didn't want to know what my knee feels like when I get up”.
He knew instinctively what was going on.
He tore the cruciate ligament in his right knee in March 2019.
And at the end of January 2020 he injured himself again after his first respectable successes in the World Cup in Idre Fjäll (Sweden).
The team immediately knew what to do.
"Before I could think properly, the MRI appointment in Munich was already over, our physiotherapist sat in the car with me and took me to the practice of DSV team doctor Manuel Köhne." He is currently in the Alpine World Championships Cortina, however, was present at the examination via cell phone and computer, made the diagnosis and made the appointment for the operation on Monday.
"It really can't go any better," says Bachsleitner and doesn't mean it macabre at all.
“On the one hand I'm a positive person, on the other hand I'm still in the flow of my mega-season.
It would be much more annoying if I had never qualified for the finals. ”Besides, the season is almost over anyway.
"There are only three races to go, and in ten months I will be back at the start of the World Cup opener in Val Thorens (France)."
Bachsleitner is not a dreamer.
“To be honest, I haven't fully realized that there are nine tough months ahead of me.
That won't happen until the days after the operation. ”But one thing is beyond doubt for him:“ I've known from the past two years that I can make comebacks.
Version 3.0 is now available. "
Kathrin Ebenhoch