Luca di Montezemolo, the former Ferrari chairman and ex-boss of seven-time Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher, issued a brief statement to reporters regarding Schumacher’s condition.
The 47-year-old Schumacher has been at home in Switzerland while recovering from head injuries suffered in a Dec. 29 2013 skiing accident in the French Alps.
“I have news and unfortunately it is not good,” Montezemolo told reporters, according to a report on DailyMail.com. “Life is strange. He was a fantastic driver and only had one accident with Ferrari in 1999.”
“He was a great driver and we shared a great personal and professional relationship, we also had the pleasure of having our children at similar times.
“Unfortunately a fall while skiing, an accident, has broken him,” Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport reported.
Schumacher, who reportedly hit his head on a rock in the skiing accident, was put into a medically-induced coma after two emergency brain surgeries at Grenoble University, immediately following the accident.
After a 189-day coma Schumacher left Grenoble Hospital in June of 2014 for University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland, though he still required round-the-clock care.
On Sept. 9, 2014 Schumacher returned home, though his home (near Lake Geneva in Switzerland) had been renovated to accommodate his 24-hour care.
In December of 2014—around the one-year anniversary of the crash—CNN.com reported that former F1 racer Philippe Streiff claimed, in an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien, that Schumacher “still has not regained the power of speech....but begins to recognize his own wife and children.”
That claim was quickly dismissed though by Schumacher’s manager Sabine Kehm. Kehm told the Reuters news agency: “I can only confirm that I do not know where Mr. Streiff has his information from because he has no contact with us and never has.”
In February of 2015, Express.co.uk reported that Schumacher’s medical bills of a 15-person staff had already topped more than $15 million.
Eight months later FIA President Jean Todt—a close friend of Schumacher’s—said that Schumacher was “still fighting.”
Finally in January of 2016, Todt—who was Ferrari team principal for five of Schumacher’s seven titles—said Schumacher was like family to him, according to an ESPN report. “When you have someone who is family, who is very close, when they are injured it is painful and you have to be with them.”
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