Michael Schumacher

Schumacher's love of football was genuine and longstanding. He organised regular football matches among F1 drivers and team personnel throughout his career, and was a good enough player to hold his own in serious amateur games. He broke his leg in a football match before the 1999 season, though the injury that subsequently damaged his championship that year came from a crash at Silverstone. He was a supporter of FC Cologne and played football as both recreation and serious fitness training.

In the early 1990s, having a dedicated personal trainer was not standard practice in Formula 1. Schumacher worked with fitness coach Balbir Singh throughout his career, treating physical preparation with the seriousness of an Olympic athlete. This pioneering approach to driver fitness influenced the entire sport — today it is universal practice. He trained daily, including on race weekends, and maintained an extraordinarily low resting heart rate.

Schumacher was a committed motorcycle enthusiast who raced superbikes in his spare time. He competed in the Superstock category at the Nürburgring — under a pseudonym — to avoid drawing attention. He broke his neck in a motorcycle racing accident in 2009 and required surgery, but returned to F1 for his Mercedes comeback season in 2010. He never stopped riding motorcycles after the injury.

Despite being one of the most famous athletes on earth, Schumacher kept his family almost entirely out of the public eye. His wife Corinna and their two children Gina-Maria and Mick rarely appeared at races and were seldom photographed. Corinna has maintained the same protective approach since his 2013 skiing accident, which has left his current condition a matter of deep privacy.

Schumacher obtained a helicopter pilot's licence and used private helicopters for travel throughout his career. He flew himself on occasion and maintained the licence as an active pilot. Several colleagues and friends have described flying with him as memorable — he applied the same precision to helicopter flying as to everything else.

Schumacher's racing helmets were fitted with extraordinary precision — he was known for extreme attention to the fit and feel of his equipment. Away from the circuit, he wore a bicycle or motorcycle helmet tilted at a characteristic slight angle that journalists and photographers came to recognise as distinctively his. It appears in dozens of photos from his mountain skiing and cycling activities.

Schumacher skied regularly throughout his career and in retirement. His family home in Gland, Switzerland gave him easy access to Alpine ski resorts. He was considered an accomplished skier. It was during a ski holiday at Méribel in December 2013 that he fell and struck his head on a rock, sustaining catastrophic brain injuries that have kept him away from public life ever since.