Kevin Garside 

Someone should sit at Michael Schumacher’s hospital bedside reading a sample of the Twitter love flooding timelines. If overwhelming positivity is subliminally communicated it cannot hurt, though he might struggle to reconcile the ethereal characterisation with the caricature many in Formula One loved to hate when he was winning title after title.
Schumacher had an almost pathological desire to win, which blurred ethical lines more than once in his career. He also had a gene defect which denied him any possibility of sensing the dangers associated with speed. Any who has stood at the corner of the swimming pool section at Monaco and watched the cars twitch through the entry, almost skimming the concrete walls at the apex, or observed them passing through the compression chamber that is Eau Rouge in Spa, will understand that there is no extreme sport on earth that thrills quite like a 200mph dance on four wheels.
Schumacher was not unique in his attachment to danger or in demonstrating a variable moral compass in the mad chase for glory. But that does not tell the whole story. He was a different character in repose, surprisingly shy and unfailingly polite. I was privileged in my early years as a Formula One correspondent to attend Ferrari’s winter ski weeks in the Dolomites.
This was an invite-only affair, principally a matter for Italian and German journalists. As the only representative of English national newspapers I was in an enviable position but the real value was the exposure the week afforded to Schumacher the man, not the racer.
The Ferrari high command loved him. Why wouldn’t they? From 1999 he drove them to six consecutive constructors’ championships and five drivers’ titles on the spin, ending a period of nothingness that lasted two decades.
In the evenings in Madonna di Campiglio Ferrari would commandeer a restaurant high up the mountain, for which a ski lift would open especially to transport the media party.
The team’s general manager and second in command to president Luca di Montezemolo, Jean Todt, would always seat himself next to Schumacher, whom he treated like a son, at the top table under an eave and the vino would flow.
Schumacher revelled in the quasi-intimacy of the event and the privacy respected. There would be a stage-managed photo then the filming would cease. Schumacher was surprisingly at ease, talking freely to the German journalists who had followed his career from karts to F1 supremacy. Evenings would frequently end in the bar at the Golf Hotel, where Schumacher was housed in a suite, and he would mingle with the invited guests long into the night, posing happily for pictures.
There is even a shot of Mrs Garside and Schumi in an album somewhere at home. My wife is no devotee of sport and had no real comprehension of celebrity scale on the occasion she was invited along.
This allowed her to approach Schumi as if he were just another bloke in the bar. Not quite, `which one is he?’ but close enough. We have kids exactly the same age, a gentle talking point and always a winner when you are seeking that special snap. `Sorry Michael. Would you mind standing in the middle?’ she asked. `Sure, no problem,’ he said, observing in an aside the virtues of her being bossy.     the independent