Former Formula 1 driver and Paralympics winner Alessandro Zanardi is no longer in mortal danger, almost five weeks after his handbike accident, according to his son.
There are “encouraging signals,” said Niccolò Zanardi in an interview with the Corriere della Sera. “He’ll make it, I’m sure. He’ll make it this time too, and one day we’ll talk about it,” said Zanardi: “I’m hopeful, as is my mother.”
However, his father is not conscious and could lose his eyesight, said Zanardi: “What matters is knowing whether he can communicate with us again. We have a long way to go.”
Zanardi was operated on three times
On June 19, Alessandro Zanardi was seriously injured in a traffic accident with his hand bike. At that time it was said that he had rolled over twice and collided with a truck. Zanardi suffered multiple fractures and a brain injury.
The 53-year-old was put into an artificial coma and operated on three times. His condition stabilized, as the doctors announced after the third operation, but from a neurological point of view his condition was still serious. The anesthetic was slowly shut down. Most recently, Alessandro Zanardi was transferred from the hospital to a special rehabilitation facility for brain injuries.
The Italian drove in Formula 1 in the 1990s. After a serious racing accident in 2001 at the Lausitzring, Zanardi’s legs had to be amputated above the knees. In 2012 and 2016, Zanardi won a total of four gold and two silver medals with the hand bike at the Paralympics.
:quality(85)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/MKRUUABUC5ARFCJXMFW2PN3BV4.jpg?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1)
