Dubai: It was a race against time for Thomas Morgenstern. While practising for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the ski-jumper crashed at a speed of 120 km/h from a height of more than 10 metres — which left him unconscious in a hospital for several days.
While most athletes would have resigned to their fate and waited for the next chance, the Austrian wanted to win his race against time and qualify for his third Winter Olympic Games.
This task was easier said than done as the 29-year-old went through excruciating sessions of physiotherapy. So resolute was Morgenstern that he not only recovered in time for the Sochi spectacle held from February 7-23 last year, but he went on to win the team silver in the ski jumping with the Austrian squad.
“If that was a dream come true, then what I am doing today looks an extension of another surreal experience,” Morgenstern told Gulf News.
The Austrian, who is now considered one of the most successful contemporary ski-jumpers, qualified for the semi-finals along with co-pilot Stefan Seer as the third-best in the Rotorcraft Parallel Slalom. “Being in the semi-final is definitely a huge achievement. But being in the final to be able to contest for a gold medal will definitely be the start of an awesome reality,” he added.
Winning gold medals is nothing new to Morgenstern. He made his breakthrough at the 2006 Turin Winter Games with two gold and then, four years later, he added another gold in Vancouver. “Just being there was such an achievement for me but I went on to win one more medal, a silver. That gave me a feeling of completion,” he said.
However, the accident changed everything as Morgenstern battled to overcome a fear deep within. Finally, he decided to step away from ski jumping and took up rotorcraft flying instead. “It was in March this year that I first got a feel of this new sport,” he recalled.
Success followed immediately as Morgenstern went on to win gold at the Junior World Helicopter Championships in Poland in August, which actually helped him qualify to the WAG in Dubai.
He continued to fight his own demons and penned a book entitled ‘Over My Shadow’ that encapsulated everything that had happened in changing his life and the priorities. “I had had an amazing career in ski-jumping and I thought this was time to change to something new. I chose rotorcraft flying,” he recalled.
Even though he has stepped away from ski-jumping, an amazing 12 gold medals at the World Championships, two World Cup crowns, four Winter Olympic medals and the Four Hills Tournament and the Nordic Tournament once each attest to Morgenstern’s legacy, making him just one of four people across the world to have won all four Majors.
“It’s a new beginning for me now. I am new to this sport in the midst of so many experienced pilots. Winning a medal here would be another part of the dream coming true,” Morgenstern said.
