The wonderful Tande fairy tale
From the coma to the top step on the “Kollen”
03/07/2022, 1:45 p.m
Less than twelve months ago, Norwegian ski jumper Daniel-Andre Tande fell and lost his pulse for several minutes. He is intubated, lies in an artificial coma for days and fights his way back onto the hill. At the legendary Holmenkollen he wins his first competition since the horror fall.
Daniel-Andre Tande laid his head on mother Trude’s left shoulder and cried. He wasn’t the only one that afternoon. Almost a year earlier, Tande had fallen so badly at the Ski Flying World Championships in Planica that he was on the verge of death. Now the 28-year-old Norwegian has achieved his eighth World Cup victory. In Oslo. At the legendary Holmenkollen.
“It’s sick, completely sick, it doesn’t make any sense,” Tande said, struggling to put his emotions into words at this moving moment. The fact that he had already finished second in Klingenthal almost three months earlier was “sick enough”, but now “winning at home on the Kollen – it doesn’t get any better”. Unsurprisingly, his voice cracked as he said all of this.
Tande had to be treated in an emergency after his horror fall on March 25, 2021. He reported in June that he “had no pulse for two and a half to three minutes”. He had to be intubated and mechanically ventilated and was in an artificial coma for days. When the worst was behind him, it was clear to Tande: he wanted to go back – at first just to “enjoy ski jumping”.
Next try at “Monsterbakken”
At the Holmenkollen he surprised himself not least. “I don’t think anyone expected that, neither did I,” he assured. Alexander Stöckl, Norway’s head coach, spoke of one of the “great moments of the ski jumping family”, sports director Clas Brede Braathen said: “You can’t even make a film out of it, that would be too stupid, too nice.”
So now Tande travels on to Vikersund as a winner. The Ski Flying World Championships start there on Thursday (until Sunday) on a hill they call “Monsterbakken”. Will Tande jump? “I can promise,” he said, “that I’ll definitely try.”