In spring 2022, Ryan Regez stood on the summit as Olympic and overall World Cup winner. He hasn't won since then. The 31-year-old speaks of a vicious circle. Now he is fit again.
17.12.2024, 05:00
SDA
Preparation has been promising, "fantastic" even, says Ryan Regez. The Bernese Olympic ski cross champion speaks of "super training sessions" and "super training conditions". He has put in a lot of kilometers on the snow and has remained symptom-free. The best conditions to return to the good old days and regain his old strength after two epidemic years.
Regez has not won a race since his Olympic victory in February 2022. He was no better than eighth in the fatal race in Arosa when he tore his cruciate ligament. But now, after this good preparation, things should work out again. After all, Regez has everything that makes a successful ski cross racer.
But it's not that simple with Ryan Regez, the 1.92 m tall model athlete bursting with strength, with his unique speed on skis and gentle disposition. He is still skiing with the handbrake on, as he says himself. He still lacks confidence in his left knee - and the self-confidence that an athlete who has beaten everything and everyone for a whole season should not lack. That one good result that could break the deadlock is still missing.
"I'm standing in my own way"
The start to the World Cup was a failure. Regez got stuck twice in qualifying in Val Thorens a week ago. "I know I could do it. But I still didn't believe in myself," he says a few days later in Arosa, where the sprint races of the second World Cup stage will be decided on Tuesday evening. In the last week of training in St. Moritz, Regez had previously taken a few hard knocks on his knee. The ligaments held, but the knee reacted.
"It's not the fear of a new injury that is preventing me from performing at one hundred percent," Regez insists. Rather, it is the search for lightness, for the self-image that carried him through the races in the successful days and the search for which is now proving difficult. "I'm getting in my own way. There's a lot going on in my head," says Regez. The lack of self-confidence of an Olympic champion.
There is still time until the next highlights, the home World Championships in St. Moritz next March and the 2026 Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina. And even if an Olympic champion has to qualify within the team, Regez is not putting himself under pressure - just as he didn't do last season when he made his comeback in St. Moritz after tearing his cruciate ligament, but carefully felt his way through the season. The focus is not on the home World Championships, he emphasizes.
His time of suffering began two years ago in Arosa. A crash in the small final of his home World Cup took him off the highs that had culminated in his Olympic victory and overall World Cup win in the previous season. The devastating diagnosis: torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, pulled inner ligament, two small tears in the meniscus.
Caught in the negative
The rehab was tough - Regez calls it "extremely gnarly". Unlike his team-mate Alex Fiva, seven years his senior, with whom he had climbed the Olympic podium in February and who had also suffered a cruciate ligament rupture ten months later, shortly before him, the healing process did not go smoothly. A year after the bliss in China, Regez hit hard.
Looking back, Regez speaks of an "extreme psychological strain. I was trapped in the negative, it was a vicious circle." Injuries are nothing new for Regez. In 2017, he suffered a similar injury to his right knee (torn cruciate ligament, torn medial collateral ligament, slight tear of the meniscus), and in 2021 his season ended prematurely due to a broken hand. The comebacks went according to plan.
Now he has to learn to be patient, says Regez. He lacks the self-confidence for immediate success. But the belief that he can make it back to the top is there. "Things will go well again at some point, I know that. The motivation to ski and to make it is extremely high," says Regez.
