Thomas Dreßen’s long suffering ended with a primal scream in the Rocky Mountains. 995 days after his last World Cup start, Germany’s best downhill skier, who has called Scharnstein im Almtal his home for years, made a remarkable comeback last week in eighth place in Lake Louise. Now the competition has to take him into account in Beaver Creek as well. Yesterday’s descent had to be canceled like last Friday in Lake Louise due to strong winds and snowfall. Today (6 p.m.) is the next attempt, before Sunday (6.15 p.m., live ORF 1) a Super-G concludes the speed weekend.
“You’re used to it, but now it’s very unfortunate. We certainly won’t get all the races back, that’s annoying with a view to the overall World Cup,” said Austria’s Matthias Mayer with the cancellation. Dreßen had fewer problems with it, every day off is good for his injured knee.
“It felt like coming home,” said the 29-year-old after his hussar ride in Lake Louise. No wonder given his long forced break: For the Scharnsteiner by choice, it was the first World Cup race since March 2020. Dreßen had first slowed down a hip operation. Then an operation on the injured right knee made sure that he missed the entire past season, including the Olympic Games.
Go to the mental coach
The extent of his knee damage, says Dreßen, “that really hit me”. The “real low blow”, however, came in November 2021, exactly one year ago, “when my teammates all flew to America and I didn’t even know when it would be snowing again”. There, reports the German, “I fell mentally into a hole, I had mental problems there”. Dreßen sought a conversation with the Salzburg mental coach Thomas Wörz. It turned out that he had already gone through “slight depressive phases”: “It was new territory for me.”
Now Dreßen is returning to the notorious “Birds of Prey slope”, which threw him off so brutally in 2018 and seems to be the root of all his injury troubles. Dreßen, however, regained self-confidence before that. “I know now that I can still do it.”
Source: Nachrichten
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