He fell off the balcony while sleepwalking and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since

In the summer of 2020, Philipp Kuttin spent some wonderful vacation days at Lake Traunsee in Upper Austria. It was a vacation that changed his life.

Kuttin went to bed one night and when he awoke he was lying in a meadow. Without feeling in the legs. Kuttin had fallen twenty feet from the balcony of his room. Apparently he was sleepwalking, like he used to do as a kid.

“I immediately noticed that I can no longer move down from the upper body,” the former competitive athlete described in the newspaper “Heute”. He was in great shock. “I felt nothing at all.”

The last time he checked his cell phone was at 1:30 a.m., Kuttin continues. According to the police, he landed on the meadow an hour later. The investigation showed that he probably hit his head against a concrete edge when he fell.

Since then, Kuttin has wondered how the tragic accident could have happened. No one has a definitive answer. He got sunstroke that day and it was full moon, he said in the “Kleine Zeitung”. There he also expressed his vague hope that one day he would be able to walk again. “Of course you play with this idea, but in terms of feasibility it is immensely difficult.” The doctors made it clear to him that in 99 percent of cases nothing would come back.

“I said to myself: yes, shit, but it just happened. Life goes on,” he told The Red Bulletin. Five or six days after the accident, he discussed with his parents what to do next: “How do we grow it? house? Are we selling the car?”

The former Nordic combined athlete, who won gold with the Austrian team at the 2015 Youth Olympic Festival, has started his new life. By training a lot he has better control of his muscles, which makes some things much easier for him. “It’s our turn, for example when I’m shopping, I’ll only need one hand to reach higher shelves.”

Any progress is progress, no matter how small it may seem. “For me, it feels like a major advancement,” Kuttin points out, “especially when I notice that skills are returning that weren’t there before.”

Kuttin is convinced that the fact that he was once a competitive athlete helps him. Through this, he learned to deal with defeat and built up mental strength. This is especially useful on dark days, which also occur in between. “Everyone has that,” says the Carinthian, whose father Heinz was once ski jumping world champion.

Philipp Kuttin remained faithful to the sport even after the accident. The 25-year-old is studying sports engineering in Vienna.