Fallen ski talent is back on track: Meillard flees from fear

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In all the fuss surrounding Lara Gut-Behrami (32), it was almost forgotten. Mélanie Meillard (25) achieved a nice personal victory. 17th place, the best gigantic result since her serious knee injury seven years ago. The former super talent finally sees light at the end of the tunnel and trusts her body.

She didn’t win and wasn’t on the podium. She didn’t make the top 10 or the top 15. And yet Mélanie Meillard felt like a secret winner in Sölden. “It’s nice to start the season like this. This is an ideal start,” she says after her 17th place in Sölden (Austria). Now some will say, “Excuse me? How can you be satisfied after such a placement?”

Pain, operations, desperation

To understand this, you have to turn the wheel of time back to February 2018. At that time, shortly before the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang (SKor), the super talent of Hérémence VS tore his left knee during training. “A new chapter in my life is beginning,” said the then 19-year-old.

What she couldn’t have known at the time: it was a chapter full of pain and despair. Meillard decided to have the cruciate ligament repaired with a tendon from a dead man. A mistake for which she had to pay bitterly. There was no progress, my knee always hurt, my cheerfulness fell into a hole. Meillard went under the knife again, this time the doctors used body material. Still, it took years for her to get back on track. Salvation followed last March: 7th place in Are (Sd).

She never gave up – and is now being rewarded

And now 17th place, the best result since Pyeongchang – at least in the giant slalom. In other words, in the discipline in which Meillard had injured herself and which she subsequently feared – fear of the forces acting on her knees, fear of another accident, fear of the possible end of her career.

“I was finally able to implement what I showed in training during the race,” she says. Above all, the fifth fastest time in the second run gives Meillard a boost; she lost only 33 hundredths to Gut-Behrami (32) – and all on a course that does not suit her due to its extreme steepness.

“It’s been a long time since I achieved such a good result,” she says. There’s no doubt about it: winter can come for Meillard.

Source : Blick