Maria Höfl-Riesch talks about her worst injuries and the fight to return to the slopes – with all the ups and downs.
Former ski racer Maria Höfl-Riesch has spoken openly about the most difficult moments of her sporting career.
The 40-year-old described in the new podcast SPORT1 Deep Dive how, despite numerous serious injuries, she repeatedly found the courage to return and continue her career – setbacks that shaped her as much as her greatest successes.
She suffered her first serious fall in the Super-G in Cortina d’Ampezzo in January 2005. “I had never had a knee injury before and didn’t know what it felt like. I just noticed that something had happened,” Höfl-Riesch recalled.
At the time, she was “in such great shape” and didn’t want to believe “that it was something bad now”. She drove herself into the valley – but the bitter diagnosis came in the hospital: torn cruciate ligament, the end for the World Championship and the entire season.
“It was a serious injury”
Just one year later, on December 10, 2005 at the Giant Slalom in Aspen, the next setback followed. “It was very frustrating. It happened in Aspen at the Giant Slalom, and I knew immediately what it felt like,” she said. “It was a serious injury… It was really hellish pain. It was also only two months before the Olympics,” said Höfl-Riesch.
“It was a bitter blow, and of course there were moments when I thought: ‘Why should I put myself through this again now?’ But on the other hand, I was only in my early twenties, and I thought I still had everything ahead of me.”
In the end, it was her unwavering will that made her continue: “Then there was simply the ambition and the passion for the sport,… that I said: ‘I’ll bite into it again.'”
Secret action by Höfl-Riesch
However, the summer of 2006 became the next test for Höfl-Riesch. “Then the worst thing was actually this summer, because I had total problems. It didn’t go as smoothly as the year before,” she reports.
Although the recovery was slow, Höfl-Riesch did everything she could to be allowed to go to the training camp in Argentina.
To make her participation possible, she took a risky step together with her head coach: “I then made a trip to the Kaunertal Glacier in a secret action with my head coach, even though I wasn’t really ready yet. We were both totally nervous that nothing would happen. But I noticed that I had no pain at all when skiing.”
But the way back was long. “The season after that was also difficult… the mental security, that was actually the most difficult thing,” said Höfl-Riesch.
“In the end, you’re just standing alone at the start”
Her conclusion from this time: “You just have to bite sometimes. In the end, you’re just standing alone at the start and somehow have to get your butt down there alone.”
Maria Höfl-Riesch at the 2014 Olympics
Only a few years later, her greatest sporting successes followed: With three Olympic gold medals and two world championship titles, Maria Höfl-Riesch became one of the most successful German winter athletes in history.
In March 2014, just a few weeks after the Winter Olympics in Sochi, she crashed heavily at the season finale in Lenzerheide and had to quit due to injury – shortly afterwards she announced the end of her career.
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