This weekend I had the good fortune to spend a Saturday at a racing circuit among like-minded motorsport fans.
In the humidity of the Sydney summer day, with a faintly soapy smell lingering in the air – perfume sprayed to mask the smell of the neighbouring tip – conversation invariably converged onto a single question.
“What’s happening with Michael Schumacher?”
On December 29, 2013, Formula One’s most successful ever driver hit his head on a rock while skiing in France. He was hospitalised and placed into an induced coma.
At the highs of his racing career and thereafter, Schumacher mercilessly defended his privacy. This has certainly been true of his family post-accident. Schumacher’s manager and his family’s spokeswoman, Sabine Kehm, has worked tirelessly to maintain that privacy when interest in the Schumachers had been at its highest.
Kehm slowly allowed the public to learn that Schumacher is no longer in a coma, that he was showing “moments of consciousness and awakening”, that he has been repatriated to the family home.
The drip-feeding of information radiated a calmness the media has not – from journalists attempting to impersonate intensive care doctors to news crews flying drones above the family home, the hysteria in the press would be enough for even the most public of personalities to want to shield themselves from the ugliness of the situation.
For this reason, Kehm has stressed that the only reputable updates on the seven-time world champion’s condition are those that come from her. Her statements to the press have been sparse and have stuck only to the very basic facts, presumably to limit the amount of speculative analysis possible in the press and to underscore the seriousness of the situation by refusing to embellish the facts to cause unfounded optimism.
The media, regardless, has filled the vacuum with updates from myriad sources. Some have been legitimate, such as Jean Todt, a close friend of the Schumacher family, who gave little more away than his unhappiness at seeing his former driver injured. Others have been totally bogus, namely German magazine Bunte, which quoted the ever-reliable “unnamed confidant” saying that Michael was walking and talking again.
While Kehm has denied the more spurious of such claims, particularly those of Bunte, which were immediately dispelled and branded “irresponsible”, all other updates, including the exaggerated reporting of former Ferrari president Luca Montezemolo’s “I have no good news” comment, have been left to float without official substantiation. Though they are therefore to be assumed false, it leaves a significant amount of noise in the discussion for fans to pick through.
It is undoubtedly because of this that Schumacher’s former manager, Willi Weber, demanded the family release an update to cut through the growing conjecture.
“I think Michael’s fans would be happy if they were given an honest message about his condition,” he said.
“It would also help the people with whom Michael worked all these years better cope with the situation.”
Emotionally it is difficult to begrudge Weber’s argument. As a childhood Schumacher fan, I sympathise with the many who want to know the current status of the sportsman they admired, if only to know what is not true.
But it isn’t our call to make – nor is it that of Willi Weber, Luca Montezemolo, or any other person on the periphery – because, despite the significant part Michael Schumacher may have played in our lives as Formula One fans, we do not own him.
Justifying the reporting of a high profile person’s private life is a difficult argument to make. While the public can ask for some level of personal transparency from elected officials, for example, it is harder to make an argument that fans have a right to demand the surrender of any level of privacy from athe;, who merely happen to be good at something we enjoy watching.
But in the case of Schumacher, there is no grey area in which justification can be argued.
Even before his accident, Schumacher was a retired driver. His accident was unrelated to his sport and therefore has no bearing on broader Formula One discourse. He has a history of separating his home and work life, rather than there being a precedent for over-sharing.
There is no justification for the reporting of speculation, and there is no justification for putting out any information that is not approved by Kehm. To suggest anything else is deeply disrespectful to a family that continues to struggle through a heart-wrenching situation.
So what is happening with Michael Schumacher?
He is recovering at home. He is no longer comatose. He is on a long and difficult road to rehabilitation, but one with no predetermined end or pace.
That is all we are entitled to know.
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