Roland Fischnaller has been seriously injured. © pentaphoto

Injury shock: Fischnaller fears for his Olympic hopes

Bad news for South Tyrol's snowboard team: Roland Fischnaller has suffered a serious injury. The 45-year-old now fears for his chance to compete in his seventh Olympic Games.

27 November 2025

From: av

The 2025 snowboard world champion suffered a serious injury during training in Lech am Arlberg and will be sidelined indefinitely. Fischnaller sustained a double ligament tear and a bone chip in his right ankle during a heavy fall.

“Due to the heavy snowfall, it was impossible to clear the entire slope of fresh snow. I was almost at the bottom of my run when I hit a mound of fresh snow. It felt like I was skiing into a wall. Because I was on the front side, it literally crushed my right foot. There was an extremely loud crunching sound; I knew immediately that something had happened,” Fischnaller explained to the newspaper. Dolomites.

Roland Fischnaller has yet to win an Olympic medal – will he now miss out on his seventh Games? © Pentaphoto

Fischnaller was transported down to the valley in a sled and received initial treatment at the emergency room in Lech. He was then transferred to Bolzano, where he received his diagnosis at the Omega Clinic after an MRI scan. Fischnaller is currently using crutches, and competing in the World Cup opener in Mylin, China, is out of the question. "There's no point in making long-term predictions. I have to take it day by day. I'm doing intensive physiotherapy every day with Manuel Bergamo and Helene Kantioler, mainly to reduce the swelling."

What's next now?

Whether the home races in Cortina on December 13th and at Karerpass-Carezza on December 18th could be a possibility remains to be seen. Fisch has by no means given up hope for the Olympics: "It would have been too good to be true if everything had gone perfectly at the start of the season. That's practically never been the case in my career. I'm ready for this challenge too. I'm tough."