In the past months, Amelie Kober has been working hard on her comeback from a knee surgery which became necessary after the 28-year-old racer from Germany had torn her ACL in a slackline accident last June.

But instead of heading to the last training camps with her fellow teammates of Snowboard Germany, a third surgery has sidelined the two-time Olympic medallist from action again.

The mother of one who has earned a total of three world championships medals in her career so far took some time during her association's press conference last week to talk about her feelings with FISSnowboard.com.

Amelie, you have been forced to handle another setback recently with another knee surgery. How are you coping with this?

Amelie Kober: At first I was pretty depressed when I heard that I have to undergo another surgery. That made me feel low.

On the other side, you have to be realistic: without the surgery a comeback wouldn't be possible at all, and my knee would have suffered even more damage.

So, I'm happy that I got over this, and I'm ready to look ahead.

What does that mean for you and your season?

First of all, that means that the knee has to be OK again. Right now, it's far from 100%. In addition, the faith in the knee has to come back, too. When both things are OK, and the knee doesn't hurt anymore, I can get back into training mode.

I just hope that my body will do fine during rehab, and that I will be back on snow soon. However, there is no chance to mark a specific date for a comeback. And I don't think about such a date neither.

So it will be unlikely to see you competing this season but you don't put yourself under pressure?

I don't push myself too much. It's simple, you cannot predict when it's time for a comeback.

If I learned one thing over the past months then that a good health is everything. I want to be able to move normally when I once retire from high-performance sport. Therefore I have to grit my teeth and take it easy.

But to make my point clear: as soon as the knee is OK, I will be back to business.

So a career's end was never on the table?

German newspapers did understand me wrong.

That means?

If you have to undergo surgery so many times, and if you are forced to live with such problems you start thinking if everything will be OK again. You are getting afraid of what could be as such an injury has an impact not only on your sport but your whole life.

If you are in a situation like this, I guess it's normal that you start to think about your career, especially if you are frightened that you might not have one anymore. The main thing is that this fear shouldn't take over. You have to get your shit together and bite that bullet.

You have to say to yourself that things will be OK again if you fight for it, although it might not solely be in your hands.

That's the hardest part, to trust someone else – in this case your doctors. Being an athlete means you are responsible for your body. Being forced to step back was kind of new to me.

Are you frustrated because it takes so long to come back?

Well, it's obvious that something did go wrong but frustration doesn't lead to something good. You have to stay optimistic!

Source: fis-ski.com