Skier Dreßen after knee injury: “The body is not made for such extreme loads”

Patiently, Thomas Dreßen wants to return to the Ski World Cup after his cartilage was damaged. On the DSV team, he is still considered a draft horse.

Ski racer Thomas Dreßen has been unable to race for nearly two years due to an injury. So he wants to give himself some time to get back to the top of the world. At the end of November he will run his first downhill race in Lake Louise/Canada. Small steps should lead the 2018 Kitzbühel winner to the goal, after all there were other drivers who did not return to the slopes after cartilage damage in their knees.

Even with Dreßen, it wasn’t entirely clear for a long time whether or how he would return. That’s why he now lives a different life as a skater, a “cartilage-friendly life,” he told Spiegel recently. For him, that means he no longer throws himself eight times down the slope on training day, but rather four. It also takes frequent breaks to renew. “Actually, the body wasn’t made for such extreme loads,” says Dreßen.

Dreßen convinced of summer internship in South America

However, the 28-year-old quickly returned to being the driving force of the German regression team. In the summer in Chile, he kicked out some of the team’s internal competitors: “Tom’s head is different from everyone else’s. He’s got it,” says Dominic Schweiger. His coach Andreas Evers sometimes has to slow him down a bit.

In the long run, Dreßen wants to strive for victories again

His last World Cup appearance so far was in March 2020, and Dreßen has completely missed the winter, having only featured once in the World Cup in February 2021. Recently, he also reported mental issues during his long illnessA mental trainer helped him.

The Bavarian, who has already celebrated five World Cup victories, now has full confidence in his right knee once again. In the long run, he also wants to strive for victories again – at the World Cup, Olympics and world championships: “My body is too good for anything else.”

You can tell Dreßen that he’s been dealing with the transience of a skater’s life in recent years. The time when it wasn’t clear if he would be able to drive again still shaped him a bit. “I feel like it (my body, editor’s note) has given me a certain number of days for extreme fatigue,” said Dreßen of the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “And every time I go into this if I advance in the areas, it will be deducted. I don’t know how many days I have left” .

Source: sportschau.de