It was supposed to be the season of his redemption and so it was. Proof that bearing the weight of difficulties and finding the strength to overcome obstacles always pays off. Forced to stay away from the playing field for a long time, due to a bad injury, a very young Paul Buchegger grit his teeth and looked ahead with confidence: «In the worst moments the only thing that encouraged me was to think about what that I would be able to do on my return. I was just imagining what I could accomplish once I got back in shape.”
Strength, tenacity and resistance that the opposite Austrian, born in 1996, found within himself and which were well nourished by the love of those few people who can be defined as the backbone of his existence: mother Ursula and his girlfriend Dana: «My mother is a fundamental figure. She passed on many values to me, she was always there and tried to show me the way to become the best version of me. I share everything with my girlfriend and she was very good at staying close to me when I was in trouble ».
The one who represents the “bogeyman” most feared by every athlete, has forcefully burst into Buchegger’s career twice. First in 2018 and then a year later making him relive a bad “deja-vu”: “A double injury gave me a hard time: it wasn’t easy to get out of it at all. I played for a year in Ravenna and after signing with the national team in Monza in the summer, I hurt my knee. From here six months of stop. But I never had the thought of giving up and letting go. My goal was to move forward – continues the Austrian opposite – and I committed myself to rehabilitation by taking advantage of the possibility of being followed for the first 2 weeks by the team from the Olympic Center in Austria. The following summer, however, I relived the nightmare because I hurt myself again. A bad relapse that was even more complicated to deal with because I was back, I was fine, I wanted to redeem myself and instead fate (or bad luck!) decided otherwise. I was put to the test on a psychological level – Paul still remembers –, I felt lost. When I was ill, the prosecutor contacted Modena who, after the surgery in Rome, allowed me to spend a long period of recovery with them”.
