At 6.05 PM local mountain time on Friday, Daniel Albrecht officially started the count-down clock on what he has been dreaming for a long time now – his comeback in a World Cup race 22 months after his gruelling accident at Kitzbühel from January 2009.
In front of a selected group of established World Cup reporters who gathered in his hotel at Beaver Creek, the 2007 Super-combined World Champion beamed when he informed them about his intention to get back on the tour on Sunday at the occasion of the second giant slalom race of the 2010/11 World Cup season.
After thanking the Swiss trainers, his close friends and all who helped and supported him so much during the past very difficult months and explaining how hard he had to fight for such a long time, Albrecht said “….after discussing with them about my future program, I’ll be starting in Sunday’s race. Why? Because I have a good opinion about my form. I feel sure and I just want to give it a try, know where I am and check how I’ll handle it, see what I can do and what can happen to me”.
“I need new directions to help me moving on and planning my next steps” the Swiss added. “The goal on Sunday is simply to race, it’s not about points or results, but just about racing again. It’s very difficult to explain but since my injury, I can only recover the sensations that I am able to newly feel again.”
“I have no idea how it feels on race-day, how it goes when you are at the start. I don’t know what all can happen. As I strongly wish to come back, it’s important for me to go through this again. I’m aware that it was fine for me to be a racer but I don’t remember the inside feeling about racing. Since I wish to come back I need to regain those sensations and find out if it’s worth it and what it meant to me.”
“I also need to know if it was a good feeling and find out on what may be happening on the course. That’s why I wish to race on Sunday, without any pressure, just to see what’s going to happen.”
Daniel Albrecht’s comeback on the World Cup tour was just a matter of time as the 29-year-old Swiss, a winner in that giant slalom at Beaver Creek three years ago, has been pushing hard for it for a long time.
Last week, he took part in two training runs in downhill at Lake Louise. He was aiming to enter the race but changed his mind after checking his last run on video and talking to his trainers who were not so positive about it. Instead he travelled to Aspen to be a fore-runner in a Nor-Am giant slalom race won by France’s Jean Baptiste Grange. Unfortunately that test was not very positive as he straddled a gate and crashed out of the course in the first run, fortunately without getting hurt.
At Lake Louise he has told the press about his profound desire to be a true racer again and insisted that he felt ready again to compete. He wished to verify his potential in a real experience after months of practise at training camps. He also said that he needed the full support and the confidence of his trainers to keep moving ahead with self-belief.
“To be racing again would boost my energy and help me a lot, I really need it now,” he explained after his second training run on the downhill course.
At the end of last season, Albrecht returned on the World Cup tour at Garmisch-Partenkichen – yet only as s ‘special’ fore-runner of the last giant slalom of the Bavarian Finals.
He has been fast in some timed training runs held during summer camps in Argentina or on Swiss glaciers, yet not as consistent as in the old days according to his trainers who were reluctant to let him come back so early in the season. They worried about a new accident and also the risk to lose his ranking within the international start-lists which has been protected since his accident thanks to the so-called ‘injury-status’ that should allow him to start from the first seed on Sunday.
Yet he would lose that special ‘injury-status’ in case he enters more than one race without scoring good results in the following competitions.
“It’s not worth it. I mean if I do recover my former shape, I should be able to achieve good performances even with higher start-numbers,” Albrecht also commented in Canada. “The most important for me is to race and see what comes out. It could be an important part of my rehabilitation.”
A winner of four World Cup events in his career including technically demanding races as Soelden and Alta Badia two years ago, Albrecht finished a promising 7th in the 2008 World Cup standings. Experts and colleagues looked up at him as a future overall World Cup champion.
In the meantime his good friend Carlo Janka stood in his footstep and clinched the big crystal globe last season. “I have to hurry winning it before the return of Daniel,” Janka graciously commented at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. As the other members of the Swiss team, Janka has been strongly affected by his friend’s accident in Austria and he dedicated him his first major triumph at Val d’Isère in February 2009, only a few days after Albrecht woke-up from a long coma at the hospital in Innsbruck.
“It has been a long journey and it’s really fantastic to imagine being racing again soon,” Albrecht also said at Beaver Creek. “Just look back where I was one year and half ago.”
Contributed by MJL
