Last winter, one of the biggest stories in skiing was the injuries 29-year-old Hermann Maier suffered in a motorcycle accident in August, and his subsequent bid for an Olympic return.

But the double Olympic champion was unable to recover in time from the severe compound facture of the leg and serious muscle damage he sustained when he collided with a car on a road near the Austrian town of Radstadt. This winter, Maier is confident he will be able to return.

He has been training with his Austrian teammates on the glacier at Zermatt, Switzerland, and has plans to join them in August in Portillo, Chile, and hopefully to return to racing this season.He has been preparing hard for his return to the slopes, even “biking” with a specially designed “hand ergometer” in his hospital bed.

Hermann used the final days of the winter in the Mountains near his hometown Flachau (after a shark diving holiday) go back on skis with his skiing coach Andreas Evers late April/beginning of May. He says: “It was a great feeling to be back on skis and I was surprised that it was going really well.” His endurance coach Heinrich Bergmüller says that “physically, Hermann is nearly back on his top level.” Hermann hopes to make a comeback as a ski racer in his previous fields of Super-G, downhill and GS.

Maier says the hardest part was having to watch other people racing, although he has realized that in spite of the seriousness of the injury it could have been much worse.

[Source: Ski Press]

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