The drama surrounding Olympic track cycling champion Kristina Vogel (33) doesn’t let you go!
The paraplegic former athlete suffered a pulmonary embolism on Friday and has been in the Berlin accident hospital since Saturday. First in the intensive care unit, since Monday in the normal ward. Vogel to BILD: “A few more hours at home and I would have been dead.”
Goal from goal to goal You can score a goal like this once in your life!
Source: Image04/17/2024
Thrombi, i.e. blood clots, were removed from her lungs. “They look like fat earthworms. Once they got out, I immediately felt better,” she says. It wasn’t the first shocking moment in her life. “Apparently I’m really good at drama,” she says sarcastically.
The first two dramas took place on the Olympic tracks in London and Rio de Janeiro. They each ended with gold.
London 2012: In the team sprint final with Miriam Welte (37), she finished after the Chinese Gong Jinjie (37) and Guo Shuang (38). However, due to a substitution error, the Asians were placed in second place, the Germans had gold.
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Rio de Janeiro 2016: In the sprint final against Brit Rebecca James (32), her saddle flew off in the last few meters – at 60 km/h. Undeterred, she still races to the finish: gold! A scene that will not be missing from any Olympic review for years to come.
Then the real dramas that changed her life.
Cottbus 2018: During team sprint training, Pauline Grabosch (26), who was in front of her, swerved upwards as planned. Vogel accelerates, but suddenly a Dutch junior driver is standing in front of her on the track. Because she has her head bent far down over the handlebars, she sees him too late. A devastating crash occurs.
Kristina Vogel posted this photo from her hospital bed on Monday
Photo: Instagram/kristina.vogel
One of her closest friends, former world champion Maximilian Levy (36), is there immediately. When she wants to tell him to take off her shoes, she sees them being carried away. “At that moment I knew it was worse,” says Vogel.
Bird with horror crash in Cottbus
The helicopter takes us to the accident hospital (UKB) in Berlin. The doctors can save her life, but they cannot save her from a wheelchair. The injuries are too severe. Months of rehabilitation follow.
Kristina Vogel (from) honors gold winner Lea Sophie Friedrich, who trained with the Federal Police under Vogel, at the 2022 European Championships in Munich
Photo: Sebastian Kayser
Berlin 2024: The Thuringian has now moved from Erfurt to the capital. She feels sick on Friday evening. “The pulse was high, I had difficulty breathing and thought I was suffocating. “What the hell was that?” she tells BILD.
“The doctors there basically saved my life for the second time,” said Vogel. “There are also a lot of nurses there that I know from 2018. Of course we didn’t want to see each other again that way.”
Her actual plan wasn’t a drama: “The next hospital stay should be when I become a mother…”