Aivar Rehemaa tells Urheilu about his serious accident during Saturday’s ski tests. He walked down the corridor of a hospital in Trondheim the day after back surgery.
On Sunday afternoon, a cheerful and good-natured man answered the phone from the hospital in Trondheim. Skiing coach of the Estonian national team Aivar Rehemaa41, plunged off the icy test track at Granåsen Stadium in Trondheim on Saturday and fell off a cliff into a two-meter-deep ravine.
The ambulance immediately rushed the Estonian to a local hospital, where a spinal fracture was diagnosed and operated on. Rehemaa says that at the bottom of the gorge, the worst scenario, i.e. paralysis, also occurred to her.
– I remember the whole situation to the second, even if I don’t want to remember. I immediately tried to see if I could move my legs and I could. The situation was very scary, but in the end I was very lucky, says Rehemaa, who actively competed in three Olympic and seven World Championships from 2003-2017.
No protective fence
For some reason, the end of the test track was not properly marked or protected, even though the rock ledge is located immediately outside it.
Rehemaa, who was successfully operated on Saturday, does not want to blame the organizers for possible negligence.
– I don’t think that it is appropriate with the information that is still lacking. Mistakes happen and you have to learn from them.
Rehemaa was there, for example, at the Vancouver Olympic Games in 2010, when the Slovenian star Petra Majdic plunged off the track into an unprotected ravine with serious consequences.
Dramatically better
Rehemaa says that she has already gotten back on her feet and is feeling reasonably well.
– On Saturday it was really bad, but today already dramatically better. I’ve already walked a bit in the hospital’s corridors today, says Otepääläinen, who won the 2002 World Youth Championship gold.
Rehemaa says that she still can’t say exactly when she will return to Estonia and how long she will have to be away from coaching activities due to sick leave.
– I have received a lot of messages from people and I am grateful for that. Compared to the starting points, relatively little was managed here.