Vienna, Austria – Just five weeks before the Alpine skiing World Cup kicks off in Soelden, Austria, the host country’s Super G World Champion Hannes Reichelt is out indefinitely following back surgery.

Reichelt, 36, complained of back pain ever since returning from the Austrian team’s summer training camp in Chile. He underwent a partial diskectomy on Saturday evening at a hospital in Innsbruck, according to officials with the Austrian Ski Federation.

“Hannes Reichelt will have to rest for the next few weeks in any case. The healing process will determine when he can train on snow and enter the Ski World Cup again,” attending physician Michael Gabl indicated.

“The pain that I had before the surgery, is fortunately gone,” Reichelt said through the Austrian team. “I hope for a good healing process, and that I soon can ski again.”

This isn’t the first back surgery for Reichelt, who underwent a similar procedure in January 2014 mere weeks after winning the famed World Cup downhill in Kitzbuehel. That procedure kept him out of the last Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.

Reichelt secured the World Champion Super G title in January 2015 in Beaver Creek, Colo., four years after taking silver in the same event in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.