Its pilot helicopter who rushed Michael Schumacher to hospital after his serious skiing accident has spoken publicly for the first time, 12 years after the Formula 1 legend was injured in the French Alps.
Yannick Denez was the man who undertook his transfer Schumacherimmediately after serious head injury.
Today, he reveals that the images of that day remain indelible in his memory.
He did not know who the injured person was
On December 29, 2013, Yannick was working as a pilot for the company SAF Hélicoptères, which specializes in air transport and rescue operations in mountainous areas.
His team received an urgent alert from the Meribel ski resort to transport a seriously injured skier. However, until they arrived at the scene, no one knew who the injured person was.
“A rescuer jumped out of the helicopter with the doctor and said to me: “Let’s go to Schumacher!”. At first I thought he was joking. But when the commander ordered us to remove our microphones and GoPros, and forbid reporters to accompany us, I knew it was true.”
Although Yannick was not much of a Formula 1 fanatic, he was fully aware of the huge appeal of the German driver.
“Subconsciously, the pressure was there because I knew he was worshiped as a god. But to me, he was just another seriously injured person,” he noted.
The rescue operation
As he describes, the atmosphere during the operation was highly charged. The track was immediately closed to all other skiers, while only the rescuers, doctors and Schumacher remained at the scene.
The minutes that passed until he was transferred to the helicopter passed almost in silence, as, as the pilot explained, at such moments “everyone closes in their own bubble.”
Yannick and his colleague placed the seven-time world champion in a special vacuum layer for stabilization and then boarded him in the helicopter.
There followed a flight of about 25 minutes to the hospital in Grenoble, almost without a word, where Schumacher was immediately handed over to the doctors for surgery.
“The hospital turned into an F1 track”
When the transfer was completed, Yannick did not have a clear picture of the seriousness of Schumacher’s condition. However, a few days later, returning to the same hospital for another airlift, he found himself in front of an unprecedented scene.
“A few days after the accident, I returned to the hospital to transport another injured person. What I saw shocked me: there were so many buses, red flags and people everywhere, that the hospital grounds had turned into a Formula 1 track. It was unbelievable,” he told the French newspaper.
Revelations 12 years later
Today, Yannick works for France’s Civil Protection Service at Grenoble Air Base. As he explained, it took 12 years before he spoke publicly about that experience, choosing to respect the Schumacher family’s privacy.
Michael’s wife, Corina, has kept an extremely limited circle of people around the former driver, consisting of close friends, relatives and a few doctors, with the aim of protecting the privacy of his condition.
To this day, information about his health remains limited, with the only confirmation being that he continues to receive medical attention.
How did the accident happen?
Footage from the camera on Schumacher’s helmet showed that he was not speeding at the time of the accident. The driver hit a rock under the snow, which threw him about 3.5 meters away.
The fall resulted in him hitting his head on a large rock, the force of the collision breaking his helmet in two.
Schumacher then underwent two major surgeries and was placed in an artificial coma, which lasted a total of 250 days, more than eight months.
Yannick Denez’s testimony is expected to form part of a wider report involving dozens of doctors and professionals who had direct knowledge of the events surrounding Schumacher’s accident.
