The 27-year-old Lebanese had only four competitors behind him in last Friday's Olympic race in Val di Fiemme. Samer Tawk couldn't care less.
He shouldn't even have been here.
"I thank God that I'm alive. Because I shouldn't have been after a 14-meter fall straight into the asphalt. So I'm so happy that I'm alive, and that I get to be at the Olympics," Samer Tawk says.
He already competed at one Olympics, at Pyeongchang 2018. But the following year he made a stupid mistake, skiing in the wrong place back home in Lebanon - and fell carelessly down a cliff.
"Enjoying" the pain
In an interview with Deutsche Welle ahead of this year's Olympics, he described how he broke his hip in four places, that his left leg was partially paralyzed, and that he suffered both internal bleeding and multiple fractures. He was hospitalized in the intensive care unit for a week, but survived.
"In the morning when I wake up, I'm still very stiff. When I drive, my legs hurt, the same when I exercise. But instead of complaining, I've found a way to enjoy the pain and "feel" my body in a different way," Samer Tawk says now.
He thought for a long time that he would never ski again. Doctors said he would never even be able to walk normally. He carried those thoughts with him during last week's half-marathon, where he finished just over nine minutes behind the winner, Johannes Høsflot Klæbo of Norway.
Falun next
"I felt all my injuries. But I enjoyed the pain. I thought back to all the time I was bedridden and thought I would never be able to ski again, and all the times the doctors said I would never be able to ski again," Samer Tawk says.
"I was riding around thinking, ‘I did it, I'm here, at the Olympics, the crowd is amazing and the track is amazing.’ It was incredibly tough, but I still felt so incredibly happy because it's an Olympic track. It's not just any track," Samer Tawk says.
He already has his next goal in mind.
"I'm going to compete at the World Championships in Falun next year. But first I'm just going to enjoy the Olympics for the next few days. I've done that once before. But this time it means something different. Because this wouldn't be possible, but now it was," Samer Tawk says.
