Zanardi speaks!
the man is indestructible...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/p...rash-jwt6333wm
it's behind a paywall:
Italian Paralympic champion Alex Zanardi, 54, has spoken his first words since a near fatal collision between his hand bike and a lorry left him with severe head injuries seven months ago.
Zanardi’s emergence from a coma after a series of facial construction operations marks a second dramatic comeback for the former Formula One driver, who turned to hand biking after losing both legs in a crash in 2001.
“It was extremely emotional when he started to talk, no-one believed it,” said Federica Alemanno, the doctor who treated him at Milan’s San Raffaele hospital, told Corriere della Sera. “He was there, and he communicated with his family.”
It has been long haul back for one of Italy’s best loved and most determined sportsmen, who won two gold medals and a silver on his hand bike at the 2012 London Paralympics and an individual gold and silver at the 2016 event in Rio de Janeiro.
Last June he was sprinting down a hill at 50 kmh in an open road race in Tuscany when he careered into the path of an oncoming lorry, suffering devastating facial and cranial trauma in the collision and requiring multiple operations after being airlifted to hospital.
The injury followed a hugely successful career in racing hand-cranked bikes that Zanardi launched after his car racing years ended in near tragedy in 2001.
After a spell in Formula One in the 1990s, the Italian was competing in a CART race at Germany’s Lausitz track when his Reynard-Honda stalled and was sliced in half by an oncoming car — a collision which severed both his legs, left him with just a litre of blood in his body and little hope of survival. “I could have easily died right there from the impact,” he later said.
Within nine months he was racing again in the World Touring Car Championship, driving a BMW 320 with a special pedal he could use with his prosthetic legs before he discovered hand bikes, building his own and taking fourth place in the hand bike section of the New York marathon in 2007 after training for four weeks.
In London in 2012 he competed on his bike at Brands Hatch, a course he knew well from his days as a driver.
While racking up victories, he also appeared on Italian TV as a presenter, describing his determination to live with his injuries, and once claimed, ”If some people could fly, Usain Bolt would feel disabled,” adding, “Doing the best with what I have is the biggest challenge.”
Now he faces the second great challenge of his life, as he approaches a long and difficult recovery from his head injuries. A spokeswoman at San Raffaele hospital said that while the announcement that Zanardi had spoken was made this week, he had first communicated before he was transferred in November to a hospital in Padua, closer to his home.
“There have been steps forward and steps back,” his wife Daniela Manni told La Stampa this week, adding, “His recovery will be very long.”
•Charles Leclerc has become the fifth Formula One driver to test positive for Covid-19. The 23-year-old, who drives for Ferrari, said that he was “feeling okay” but was suffering from mild symptoms.
Leclerc, who is isolating at his home in Monaco, was recently on holiday in Dubai and had flown home. He was informed that he had been in contact with someone who had subsequently tested positive and he then had a test, which confirmed that he had caught it.
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