"The diagnosis hurt"

Swiss ski athlete almost lost his foot

Jonas Lenherr crashed in Veysonnaz at the beginning of March.(Bild: GEPA)

Jonas Lenherr can truly speak of luck in misfortune. After injuring his foot in March, the ski cross athlete narrowly escaped an amputation a week and a half ago.

"I thought my foot was sprained," the Swiss skier recalled of his fall in Veysonnaz. The doctors were to prove him wrong, the 35-year-old had broken his lower left ankle. "The diagnosis hurt. At the same time, I believed I would soon be back on the snow."

"That kills you"
The wish remained unfulfilled, and Lenherr still felt severe pain a few weeks after the operation, which the doctors attributed to the protruding screws. But even after these were removed at the end of November, it didn't get any better. "I couldn't put any weight on my foot in the evening. No painkiller helped. I didn't know what was going on, it gets you down," Blick quotes the five-time World Cup winner as saying. 

Lenherr is working on his comeback:

After another operation, the doctor reportedly revealed to him how serious the foot actually was. "He said: 'You were lucky that the joint wasn't affected, because you usually only see that much pus in amputations'," Lenherr explained. If the ski athlete had not acted promptly, he would have lost his foot.

Jonas Lenherr wants to be fit again before the World Championships in St. Moritz.(Bild: GEPA)

Six weeks of antibiotics
"Sport suddenly becomes a distant memory," says the St. Gallen native, who now has to take antibiotics for six weeks. It is uncertain when he will be able to get back into his ski bindings, but his plan to take part in the World Championships in St. Moritz (March 17 to 30) still stands.