‘I felt like I was trying to breathe underwater’ – Michael Matthews reflects on journey from mid-year health turmoil to Rwanda Worlds motivation

Michael Matthews hasn’t missed out on lining up for Australia at a Road World Championships since 2018. The drive to once again be on the start line in Rwanda wasn’t diminished even after he faced a serious medical issue mid-season – a pulmonary embolism that left him not just missing out on the Tour de France, but fearing for his life.

While training at altitude, after finishing off his spring racing block with his first victory of the season at Eschborn-Frankfurt, the Australian showed the signs of a pulmonary embolism at a May/June altitude training camp in Italy, prompting his team, Jayco-AlUla, to announce that he would ‘refrain from racing’ to protect his health and well-being while the extent and cause of the issue was determined.

“I felt like I was trying to breathe underwater. I was trying to still do all my training, but I was thinking it was allergies that were holding me back,” Matthews said in an interview with Sophie Smith published on AusCycling.

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“Towards the end of the camp, when I had to do my really, really hard efforts, I just couldn’t get through the session. I got through one of the efforts and thought I was going to die.”

Things just kept getting worse, as after stopping training on the advice of his coach, even the alternative of a walk through the surrounding town left him with an elevated heart rate, and it was at that point that Matthews went to Switzerland and was checked, with a scan of his lungs revealing blood clots.

“So yeah, it was pretty scary,” said Matthews in the AusCycling article. “And then a couple of nights in a Swiss hospital by myself because everyone else was gone – that was also pretty scary, not knowing exactly what was going to happen to me, if I was going to be able to leave the hospital or if I was going to stay there, or die. I didn’t know.”

Initially, Matthews was off the bike altogether, but then, by July, he slowly returned. The racing hiatus lasted from his winning effort in Germany on May 1 right through to the Bretagne Classic at the end of August, where he came eighth.

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“I’m just super happy to be back and racing with the team and the boys,” said Matthews in a team statement after the race. “It’s been a great experience today, and it puts a big smile on my face being back in the peloton.”

It may not have been the result he was after, but he said there were “good feelings for the next races.”

Those next races are expected to include the North American one-day events of the Maryland Classic on September 6 and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec and Montréal on September 12 and 14 – with Matthews having won in Québec three times and Montréal once. Then there is the UCI Road World Championships from September 15-28, with Australia putting a high priority on defending the mixed team time trial title, which Matthews helped claim last year, and the 34-year-old will also take on the road race as part of a team that will back Jai Hindley.

Matthews has been at every Road World Championships since 2012, although in 2018, he wasn’t selected in the Australian team so just took on the team time trial with his trade team, Sunweb.

“I love World Championships, I love being around all the Aussies and obviously representing Australia,” Matthews told AusCycling. “But now with the whole season changing, with no Tour de France, with no Tour de Suisse, without all these races, it was definitely something that I could really pin my mind to and focus on.”

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