Sabine Kehm issued a brief statement to reporters in Grenoble on Wednesday, saying Schumacher's condition remained critical.

"Michael has been carefully supervised and his condition at the moment is stable, and has been stable through the night," Kehm said.

Kehm, showing some signs of the stresses of the previous four days since Schumacher's skiing accident near the resort of Meribel in the French Alps, said the medical team decided there was no call for another press briefing considering the largely unchanged situation.

Top doctors at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire clinic in Grenoble had faced the press on Monday and Tuesday mornings, each time issuing updates on operations Schumacher had undergone on the previous evenings.

Kehm said that the best current use of the doctors' time was assisting Schumacher and their other patients.

The keen skier and most successful driver in Formula One history fell and hit his head on an off-piste run on Sunday. Doctors have said that without his protective skiing helmet, he might not have survived at all.

The 44-year-old seven-time F1 champion is in an artificial coma designed to limit the stresses on his brain.

Family issues thanks for support

Schumacher's homepage, which was forced offline by the number of Internet users trying to access it in the aftermath of his accident, was reorganized on Wednesday to simply show a message of thanks from the family in English and German.

The Ferrari Formula One team specifically mentioned Schumacher in its trilingual (Italian, English and Spanish) New Year's entry on Twitter, saying: "Happy New Year! #MichaelSchumacher we are all with you!"

FIFA President Sepp Blatter similarly said his "thoughts are with Michael Schumacher and his family," while 1978 Formula One world champion Mario Andretti wished the German a speedy recovery.

msh/jlw (AFP, dpa, SID)