{"id":138485,"date":"2025-09-12T20:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T20:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/138485\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T20:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T20:12:08","slug":"i-probably-wouldve-not-survived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/138485\/","title":{"rendered":"I probably would\u2019ve not survived"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Matthews<\/a> has had a tough time recently. The Australian cyclist suffered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. The Jayco-AlUla rider is now back in competition and speaks for the first time about the recent period without racing and everything that has happened to him.Matthews won<\/a> the German WorldTour classic Eschborn-Frankfurt on May 1 and was then set to prepare for the Tour de France. The rider never took part in that race. \u201cDuring a recent altitude training camp, our medical staff discovered signs of a pulmonary embolism in Michael, and it was decided to stop all sporting activities as a precautionary measure<\/a>,\u201d the team said.Matthews has since made his comeback to the peloton: the 34-year-old rider finished eighth in the Bretagne Classic and recently rode the Maryland Classic in the United States. With the two WorldTour races in Canada<\/a>, Matthews is back on soil where he has already been successful four times. In North America, he spoke to Rouleur<\/a> for the first time about the recent period.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe doctors said that if I’d done the same training at altitude for another two to three days, I probably would\u2019ve not survived,\u201d Matthews begins the intense story. The fast man was on an altitude training camp when he started experiencing symptoms. \u201cOne day I was doing altitude training like I normally do, and the next day I was in hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

Text continues below…<\/p>\n

\"matthews<\/p>\n

Michael Matthews wins Eschborn-Frankfurt.<\/p>\n

Matthews thought it was an allergy, but the problem turned out to be much worse: “Fell off my bike”<\/p>\n

\u201cI was maybe one-and-a-half weeks into my three week camp and I couldn’t really breathe. I got a sharp, stabbing pain in my chest and I just kept training thinking it was allergies as they were cutting the grass, and I do get bad allergies.\u201d<\/p>\n

That turned out not to be the case: the pain got worse, while Bling continued to train.”\u2018I got to the end of my camp and had hard efforts and it wasn’t even possible to do one. I got head spins and fell off the bike riding uphill. We stopped the training, drove to a hospital in Switzerland.”<\/p>\n

There, it turned out that it wasn’t an allergy. \u201cAfter testing, they found blood clots in my body. They did scans and found they were in my lungs. I spent days in hospital, three months on blood thinners.\u201d A pulmonary embolism is when a blood vessel to your lungs is blocked. This reduces the amount of oxygen in your blood and causes shortness of breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Matthews has had a tough time recently. The Australian cyclist suffered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. The Jayco-AlUla…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-138485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}