In the cruelest of ironies, after surviving almost two decades in his lightning-paced profession, Formula One (F1) star Michael Schumacher was involved in a near-fatal incident right after his retirement.
In 2013, a year after hanging up his racing boots, the German F1 legend suffered a traumatic brain injury in a horrific ski accident in the French Alps.
Highlights
- A close family friend of Michael Schumacher recently shared what he knows about the F1 legend’s current condition.
- Schumacher has been out of the public eye since his near-fatal skiing accident in 2013 that put him in a coma.
- Over the years, the Schumacher family has battled several attempts to breach their privacy, including one case of blackmail.
Schumacher has not been seen in public ever since.
His family has maintained strict privacy about his location and health status, limiting visits to a small inner circle of family and friends.
Fellow German F1 racer Christian Danner recently shared what he knows about Schumacher’s condition and expressed hope to see him again on the circuit.
“However Michael looks, or under whatever conditions he's alive — I don't know — I want to see him again,” Danner said.
Michael Schumacher’s friend believes the F1 world is ready for his return
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A former racer and a television analyst who covered Michael Schumacher’s entire career, Danner spoke with OLBG in July 2026 about the latter’s health and potential return.
“The fact that he's not appearing anywhere indicates that he's probably not very well,” Danner said. “But Formula One's prepared for that. Formula One's prepared for everything.”
“He's one of the heroes in the history of Formula One, so if he would be happy and fit enough to come back, no matter the circumstances, in whatever condition, I think Formula One can cope with it easily.”
“There are all these rumors he's in Majorca, and they've put him in an estate there, and so forth,” Danner shared.
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He revealed that he has spoken with Michael’s wife, Corinna, a former champion equestrian and entrepreneur, but she has not confided much about her husband.
“When I'm speaking to Corinna, she's not mentioning it,” he said. “When I'm speaking to other people who could know, they don't tell me.”
“There are heroes in any kind of sport that have had a problem and have kind of fallen. But once they're alive, I think it does everyone a lot of good (to see them again),” he continued.
“For me personally, it would be absolutely smashing to see him. I think that feeling is around for virtually everybody in Formula One.”
In a 2025 interview with Spaceport Sweden, Danner said that he has occasionally met and had coffee with Schumacher’s wife and son, Mick, but they didn’t speak about the accident: “It’s their way of handling the issue.”
Michael Schumacher was put in a coma after a near-fatal ski accident
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On December 29, 2013, Schumacher was skiing with his son, Mick, down the Combe de Saulire mountain in the Alps near the Méribel resort in France.
Although he was an experienced skier, an unfortunate fall led to him smashing his head on a rock in an off-piste route and sustaining severe brain injury.
Schumacher was airlifted to Grenoble Alpes University Hospital, where he underwent two immediate surgeries and was put into a medically induced coma for more than three months.
In early April, he was reportedly withdrawn from the coma after showing signs of consciousness.
His medical team revealed to the press at the time that the accident could have been fatal if not for the helmet he was wearing.
“Somebody having this kind of accident without the helmet would not have got to here,” said Grenoble’s Professor Jean-Francois Payen.
“Taking into consideration what we have observed, that despite a helmet, he arrived with lesions that were quite severe, the shock must have taken place at high speed,” the physician added.
In September 2019, French newspaper Le Parisien reported that the seven-time F1 world champion was admitted to the Georges-Pompidou Hospital for an anti-inflammatory stem cell perfusion procedure.
The report claimed that he was transferred from his home in Gland, Switzerland.
The Schumacher family’s privacy has been breached multiple times
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The Schumacher family’s wish to keep things private has been tested repeatedly.
An employee at the helicopter air rescue company that transferred him from France to Switzerland six months after his accident allegedly tried to steal his medical records and sell them to media outlets for €50,000 ($57,000).
In 2023, German magazine Die Aktuelle published a fake, AI-generated interview with Schumacher, leading to the editor responsible being fired and a €200,000 ($227,650) settlement.
In 2024, the racer’s former bodyguard, Markus Fritsche, was accused of stealing around 1,500 images and 200 videos of Schumacher. Nightclub bouncer Yilmaz Tozturkan and his IT expert son Daniel Lins were also involved in the crime.
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All three were found guilty of threatening to release the photos and videos on the dark web and asking for €15 million ($15.95 million) as blackmail.
Corinna briefly spoke about the importance of privacy in their lives in the 2021 Netflix documentary on her husband’s life, Schumacher.
“‘Private is private,’ as he always said. It’s very important to me that he can continue to enjoy his private life as much as possible,” she said. “Michael always protected us, and now we are protecting Michael.”
Schumacher reportedly attended his daughter Gina-Marie’s wedding to Iain Bethke at the family’s luxury villa in Majorca, Spain, in 2024.
Michael Schumacher’s ex-colleagues have previously said his case was one “without hope”
Image credits: Formula1
After the blackmail incident, the Schumacher family took a “tougher stance” on privacy, according to the F1 icon’s former manager, Sabine Kehm.
A 2025 Daily Mail report claimed that the inner circle had been reduced to just nine people, including Corinna, Mick, Gina-Marie, and Kehm.
The other members are former F1 boss Jean Todt, former Benetton and Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn, and former drivers Gerhard Berger, Luca Badoer, and Felipe Massa.
Like Danner, other former colleagues of Schumacher have expressed their opinions about him, though they weren’t in the inner circle.
In 2024, Roger Benoit, an F1 journalist and a friend of Schumacher’s, called his situation “a case without hope.”
“There is only one answer to this question, and that is simply what his son Mick gave in one of his rare interviews in 2022: ‘I would give anything to talk to dad,’” Benoit said.
“I don't think we'll see Michael again,” former Red Bull head of operations Richard Hopkins said in 2025, in complete contrast to Danner’s recent sentiment.
He also said that those close to Schumacher wouldn’t offer details of his health, even if plied with “a lot of good red wine.”
"Let the man be." The internet sympathized with the Schumacher family amid his ongoing health crisis
