\nWooden splinter through hip and thigh: The horror crash of Moritz Mauss<\/p>\n
\u201cThe splinter went straight through my hip and my left thigh,\u201d the 18-year-old writes himself. A sentence that sounds sober \u2014 and precisely for that reason hits so hard.<\/p>\n
Two hours later, Mauss was already in surgery. Emergency. Procedure. Uncertainty. Then the first all-clear: everything went without complications. Shortly after, the next message to his community: \u201cI\u2019m already back home.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sentence that feels almost unreal when you know what happened.<\/p>\n
Because it\u2019s also clear: it could have ended very differently. Much worse. Career over before it truly began. Mauss knows that himself. \u201cI was really lucky,\u201d he says. The splinter missed nerves and most of the muscle \u2014 by centimeters.<\/p>\n
Centimeters that decide between a future or an end.<\/p>\n
Comeback in sight: Why Moritz Mauss is already looking ahead<\/p>\n
The D\u00fcsseldorf native, a recent graduate of Cologne\u2019s Apostelgymnasium and part of the system surrounding the 1. FC K\u00f6ln Sports Boarding School, is still at the very beginning. And that\u2019s exactly why this moment feels so surreal: a talent that\u2019s just starting to gain momentum, suddenly slowed by a twist of fate no one can control.<\/p>\n
But giving up is not an option.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work of the last few months isn\u2019t lost,\u201d writes Mauss. No drama, no self-pity \u2014 just focus. Eyes forward. The season isn\u2019t written off for him yet.<\/p>\n
On the contrary.<\/p>\n
As involuntary as the break is, he wants to use it. Recovery, rebuilding, comeback. Classic words \u2014 but in this case with real weight.<\/p>\n
Because those who come that close to catastrophe rarely just return as they were.<\/p>\n
Mauss has enjoyed frequent success on the track; at last year\u2019s World Championships in Apeldoorn, he won two silver medals. However, the D\u00fcsseldorf-based rider is also a force to be reckoned with in road races. Last year, he finished ninth in the junior road race at the World Cycling Championships in Rwanda. This year, the young rider took third place at the \u201cIstrian Spring Tour\u201d in Croatia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wooden splinter through hip and thigh: The horror crash of Moritz Mauss \u201cThe splinter went straight through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85,35073],"class_list":{"0":"post-624253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-track-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}