In 1994, 25-year-old new racing driver Mitchell Schumacher won the F-1 Grand Prix, becoming the youngest F-1 champion in history and the first German driver to win the F-1 title.
The fledgling Schumacher has become a world-renowned star in the world of motorsport.
Nineteen years later, Schumacher is once again making headlines, but this time the news comes that he has been hit hard by a skiing accident and is unconscious.
So, how did Schumacher rise from a small-town teenager to a world champion?
During his 10-year coma, how did his wife unswervingly guard him?
The King of Cars made his debut
Schumacher, born in 1969 in the small town of Kirkpen in western Germany, showed a keen interest in racing from an early age.
In order to cultivate Schumacher's racing dream, his father bought him a small Carter racing car.
At the age of four, little Schumacher sat in a small car for the first time.
When he first held the steering wheel and started the car, his hands were too small to hold the steering wheel, and he hit the cement base on the side of the road with one foot of the accelerator.
The father next to him was startled, but Schumacher jumped out of the car with a bright smile on his face.
From then on, Schumacher fell in love with racing and formed a lifelong bond with him.
However, Schumacher's family environment was modest, and his father was an ordinary brick worker, so he could not afford to provide Schumacher to continue his studies in the field of racing.
Schumacher recalled: "My dad didn't have any money, and if I wanted to compete, I had to go to the dumpster and pick up tires that other people had thrown away. ”
Fortunately, later Schumacher met a businessman.
Seeing that Schumacher was talented and passionate about racing, the other party funded Schumacher to officially embark on the road of professional racing.
And Schumacher also used his strength to prove to businessmen that the other party's vision and investment are not wrong.
In 1983, Schumacher began systematic racing training and improved rapidly among his age group.
At the age of 15, Schumacher won the junior championship of Germany's "Carter Racing", which was the first trophy of his career.
Three years later, Schumacher, who had just been promoted to the senior class, continued to work hard, winning the national championship and European championship of the German "Carter Racing" in succession, and won the title of "Best Racing Driver" in Germany the following year.
Schumacher from the small town of Kerpen has grown into a household name in German motorsport.
Since then, Schumacher's performance has continued to climb and he has won various awards in the European racing field.
In 1991, Schumacher qualified for Formula 1 with the help of Mercedes-Benz.
The 22-year-old Schumacher ushered in another turning point in his life, becoming a professional F-1 racing driver from that year.
Although he did not win any honors in his first competition, Schumacher's courage and talent in the F-1 arena still made him receive applause and applause from countless audiences.
The following year after switching to F-1, Schumacher finally won a Belgian race and moved to third place in the world in individual points.
In 1993, Schumacher made a splash in F-1.
In the Monte Carlo sub-race, Schumacher threw the veteran car king Senna out for more than 20 seconds in one fell swoop and won the first place in that sub-station.
Senna said with admiration after the game that Schumacher will become the biggest "roadblock" for him to win the championship in the future.
Sure enough, Schumacher knocked Senna down again in Portugal and won the F-1 title in 1994.
F-1 legend falls?
Since 1994, there has been no doubt that the F-1 racing world has ushered in the "Schumacher era".
After the start of the new season, Schumacher set himself a goal early: to win the final F-1 championship!
On the afternoon of November 13, 1994, the F-1 championship battle was staged at the Adelaide circuit in Australia.
Unsurprisingly, the winner will be decided between Schumacher and Britain's Hill.
Schumacher took the lead from the start of the race and was firmly in the ascendancy for the first half of the race.
But when the race came to lap 36, something unexpected happened!
Schumacher's car lost control and crashed into the parapet before being bounced back into the lane and collided with Hill who was close behind.
The two, who both withdrew from the race, could only climb out of the car and watch as one rival car after another flew past them.
Schumacher was very sad because losing this game was tantamount to handing over the initiative to others.
Whoever wins the final championship will be in the hands of someone else.
But fortunately, because Schumacher had accumulated enough advantages in the previous races, and his biggest rival Hill also withdrew, Schumacher still won the championship by one point.
When the standings came out, Schumacher couldn't believe his eyes, it was the cheers of tens of thousands of fans in front of him that made him realize what was in front of him.
At this moment when the dream of many years came true, Schumacher burst into tears.
But that's just the beginning.
In the following ten years, Schumacher won the championship six times, broke the F-1 world record many times, and became one of the greatest racing drivers in Germany, and even in F-1 history.
In October 2012, Schumacher announced his retirement from the field at the end of his career.
Unexpectedly, before Schumacher could enjoy his retirement life, bad luck struck suddenly.
On December 29, 2013, Schumacher and his friends went skiing in the Alps.
As a result, Schumacher hit his head on a rock and lost consciousness on the spot.
After resuscitation, Schumacher was able to save his life, but the doctor's diagnosis was equivalent to sentencing Schumacher to death.
European brain experts believe that it is unlikely that Schumacher will regain consciousness and that he will most likely live in a vegetative state in the future.
For the first three months of his hospitalization, Schumacher was in a severe coma with no signs of recovery, which left his family and friends heartbroken, as well as the hearts of countless fans.
Is it possible that a once talented racer should sleep in the dark forever?
In late March 2014, 80 days after Schumacher fell into a coma, his weight dropped dramatically to 55 kilograms.
Before the accident, Schumacher weighed 75 kilograms.
In a prolonged coma, Schumacher was only able to eat basic calories a day to keep him alive.
If it weren't for Schumacher's physical fitness and muscularity, he would have died long ago.
Therefore, Schumacher's relatives, friends, and doctors gave up hope, and subconsciously thought that Schumacher would never wake up again.
But only Schumacher's wife Corinna did not waver, she firmly believed that her husband could wake up, and declared that she would wake up Schumacher at all costs.
The wife is unswerving, and Schumacher miraculously recovers?
Schumacher and Corinna met at a ball in 1989, and they married in 1995 with a son and a daughter.
After the two got married, the relationship between husband and wife has always been very sweet.
Seeing that her husband fell into a long-term coma and was even sentenced by the doctor to be a vegetative person, Corinna had no intention of abandoning her husband.
She resolutely refused to allow her husband to be euthanized, claiming that she would wake up her husband even if she sold all her family property.
Since Schumacher's accident, Corinna has been with her in the hospital room.
She talks to her husband every day and plays his favorite music, hoping to wake him up with warmth.
Schumacher's friend Brown, FIA President Todd and others often come to visit the hospital and broadcast their conversations with Schumacher.
Amazingly, with the efforts of Corinna and her friends, Schumacher really miraculously got better!
On March 10, 2014, Eurosport reported: "It is too early to conclude that Schumacher will not recover, because Schumacher has returned to breathing on his own and does not need to rely on a ventilator." ”
Medical sources said that being weaned off the ventilator meant that Schumacher was able to make some swallowing movements unconsciously, which could reduce fluid accumulation in the lungs and reduce inflammation in the body.
At the same time, although Schumacher still shows no signs of recovery, his arms and shoulders occasionally move on their own, and most importantly, his spine is not damaged.
This suggests that Schumacher has the physiological condition to restore consciousness.
On April 4, Schumacher's spokesman sent another message: "Schumacher is showing signs of awakening! We will continue to stand with him, and we remain confident in his awakening!"
Corinna and others' expectations and dedication have finally made progress.
Over the next decade, Schumacher's physiology continued to improve.
In September of the following year, Corinna led Schumacher to Paris for stem cell treatment, trying to accelerate the "awakening" of Schumacher.
However, the current situation of Schumacher does not seem to allow for objectivity.
In 2022, Corinna admitted frankly when accepting the award on behalf of her husband: "His physical recovery is not good, which makes him very distressed." We all miss him so much..."
It is reported that Schumacher's medical expenses exceeded 200 million pounds (nearly 2 billion yuan). To pay for these expenses, Corinna sold her house and property.
On January 3, 2024, Schumacher celebrated his 55th birthday, 10 years after he fell into a coma in an accident.
It is reported that now Schumacher and Corinna live in seclusion in Lausanne, Switzerland, with more than a dozen medical staff waiting day and night.
Corinna did not allow anyone to touch her husband except for the doctor and her family.
In this small corner of seclusion, the once genius of the car king is still asleep and unconscious.
There were rumors that Schumacher had regained consciousness, and some said that he had long since woken up, but because of his isolation from the outside world, there was no way for others to inquire about Schumacher's recovery.
As for whether Schumacher can "reappear" in the future, no one can predict.
But the good news is that Schumacher's mantle has already been inherited.
In 2008, Schumacher's son, Mick, embarked on a professional racing career and competed in the German F-4 Championship shortly after his father fell into a coma.
During Schumacher's coma, Mick continued to refine his technique and won the Formula 2 Championship in 2020.
In 2021, Mick joined the Haas team and began to move towards F-1.
Perhaps in the near future, Mick will be able to embark on the same journey as his father, replacing Schumacher and continuing to gallop on the field.
epilogue
From an unknown small-town youth to a world champion, from the world's greatest F-1 driver to a "vegetative person", Schumacher's life can be described as ups and downs.
After the skiing accident, Schumacher was once sentenced to "death" by doctors, but fortunately, Corinna has never given up, preferring to sell her car and house to spend all her family property and help her husband wake up.
I hope Corinna can wait for this day, and I hope that fans can wait for the recovery of idols.