[Nicky91]

December 29 will mark five years since he fell and hit his head while skiing
Schumacher, who will turn 50 five days later, is recuperating in £50m mansion
Wife Corinna has demanded secrecy over his condition from family and friends
Sportsmail understands racing star is not bed-ridden but requires nursing care
Extensive nursing care and physiotherapy costs more than £50,000 a week

It is a bright winter’s day and next to nothing stirs outside the £50million mansion in which Michael Schumacher is hidden from the world.

December 29 will mark five years since the most successful Formula One driver in history, who will turn 50 five days later, fell and hit his head while skiing in Meribel, in the French Alps.

But Schumacher’s wife Corinna, whom he married in 1995, has insisted on secrecy over his condition, a request that has been faithfully observed by all around them. Friends don’t talk. If they do, they are no longer friends.

A few dog-walkers roam the quiet wooded paths outside the Schumacher house on the banks of Lake Geneva. Michael’s father Rolf, the former bricklayer who ran go-karts at their local Kerpen track close to Cologne to support his boy’s career, is one of them.

You can just hear golf balls pinging at the club next door, but none of the locals in Gland — a town of 13,000 situated between Geneva and Lausanne — knows the latest medical situation of the superstar who lives among them.

But Rolf, who visits Switzerland regularly from home in Bonn, confirms that Michael is inside, scotching rumours that the world’s first billionaire sportsman has been transferred to a £30m holiday home Corinna bought in Majorca this summer, or, at least for now, to a specialist brain trauma hospital in America.

Since the accident on a clear, sunny morning in Meribel at an ‘off-piste junction’, much has transpired in Formula One. Lewis Hamilton has overtaken Schumacher’s pole record, 83 to 68. But the former Benetton, Ferrari and Mercedes great remains ahead on race wins (91 to 73) and world championships (seven to five).

Schumacher’s ardent fan Sebastian Vettel has moved to Ferrari but so far failed to add to the fourth title he won in 2013. Vettel, incidentally, politely declined our enquiry as to whether he has visited his recuperating hero — one private man acknowledging the privacy of another.

Max Verstappen, who holidayed with the Schumachers as a boy, owing to his father Jos and Michael being contemporaries and friends, has emerged as the next potential star of the track, even if his aggressive driving has courted controversy as Michael’s ruthlessness once caused him to.

Most poignantly, Michael’s own son Mick, who was at his father’s side aged 14 when he hit that rock and suffered a brain haemorrhage, is the F3 champion and has signed to race for Prema in Formula Two, F1’s feeder series, next season. His future is promising, with seats at Mercedes or Ferrari a possibility one day.

Mick, who is said to be as private as his father, never delivers medical bulletins to outsiders, but last month he told Germany’s RTL channel of his relationship with Michael before the accident.

‘My dad asked if I wanted to do racing professionally or whether we should just do it for fun, as a hobby. I, of course, said I wanted to do it professionally.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...chumacher.html