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Michael Schumacher Back at Magny Cours |
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Thursday, 26 April 2007 |
The 7-times world champion will attend the French Grand Prix in the context of the agreement again linking the FFSA and the ICM.
For the third year running the Federation Française du Sport Automobile and the Institute for Cerebral and Medullar Disorders (ICM) are joining forces at the French Grand Prix to provide an exceptional event.
On this occasion, Michael Schumacher, the recently retired 7-times F1
World Champion, will spend the weekend at the Magny-Cours circuit. He
will be back on a track on which he has written some of the outstanding
pages of his career. He has scored eight victories in the race
(1994,95, 97, 98, 2001, 02, 04, 06), and won it for the fifth time in
2002 equalling Juan Manuel Fangio’s record set in 1957. Two years later
he became the first driver to win a grand prix on a strategy that
included four pitstops.
As in previous years track baptisms will be organised for the ICM.
Donors can win a lap of the track in a Ferrari with Michael Schumacher
as well as a driving suit signed by the champion.
These baptisms will be held during the race weekend in front of the
Formula 1 players in the fevered ambience of a grand prix. There will
be an ICM booth at the Magny-Cours circuit to provide spectators with
information and collect their donations.
In the words of Jean Todt, the Ferrari SpA chief administrator and
founder of the ICM: “The Magny-Cours rendez-vous is now a tradition to
back the ICM Foundation, and I would like to take this opportunity of
thanking the FFSA for the help it has always given us. I’ve always been
struck by sensitivity of the F1 enthusiasts who go to the circuit and
follow our initiative to develop medical research for brain and spinal
cord injuries. It shows us that sport can help mobilise people’s
conscience about a subject that concerns everybody, and I’m sure that
this time their generosity will be greater than ever. It’s thanks to
their help that this year we can lay the first stone of the ICM.”
Michael Schumacher: “For me, helping to create and develop the ICM has
always been something obvious: a duty in fact. It’s a fantastic project
managed by some exceptional people. I’m both happy and proud to be able
to contribute to it.”
The Institute for Cerebral and Medullar Disorders is the fruit of the
collaboration of three world-renowned professors: Gérard Saillant, an
orthopaedic and traumatology surgeon, and neurologists Yves Agid and
Olivier Lyon-Caen. It is backed by Luc Besson, Louis Camilleri, Jean
Glavany, Maurice Lévy, Jean-Philippe Martel, Max Mosley, Michael
Schumacher, Jean Todt and Serge Weinberg. It is a project of
international scientific excellence which will enable the mechanism of
neurological diseases to be studied (Alzheimer’s disease and
Parkinson’s disease, amyotromorphic lateral sclerosis, multiple
sclerosis, epilepsy and strokes) plus psychiatric illnesses (reactional
depression, psychosis, schizophrenia) traumas to the brain and spinal
cord as well as the resulting treatments.
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