{"id":539466,"date":"2026-04-19T13:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T13:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/539466\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T13:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T13:44:17","slug":"damage-to-michael-matthews-even-greater-than-we-already-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/539466\/","title":{"rendered":"Damage to Michael Matthews even greater than we already knew"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We will have to do without him in the hilly Classics over the coming week, but fortunately things are improving \u2014 both literally and figuratively \u2014 for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/michael-matthews\" title=\"Michael Matthews\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Matthews<\/a>. The Jayco AlUla Australian has spoken for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DXQ9i9UDNAQ\/?hl=nl&amp;img_index=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">first time<\/a>, six weeks after his heavy crash, about the exact injuries he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idlprocycling.com\/cycling\/michael-matthews-breaks-both-wrists-and-looks-set-to-miss-the-spring-classics\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">sustained <\/a>and how his rehabilitation has gone so far.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn March 5, I had a bad accident in training,\u201d he began. \u201cI had an open fracture in my right arm, severed tendons in my thumb, and I broke my left wrist and thumb, so I had to undergo several operations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Italy, I had surgery on my left arm straight away, and two days later I flew on to Belgium for surgery on the tendons in my right thumb,\u201d Matthews continued. \u201cOn top of that, I also had a fractured eye socket. So it has been a huge process. We are now six weeks on, and fortunately I can move my fingers again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt has taken a long time. For three weeks I couldn\u2019t do any exercise at all, but after that I was able to start walking a little and go to the gym. Four weeks after my crash, I was allowed to start on the indoor trainer, and my body slowly started moving again. By now, I\u2019ve been able to ride outside three times,\u201d he explained in mid-April.<\/p>\n<p>Matthews thanks everyone for their support<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to thank everyone for the messages I received. Because I couldn\u2019t move my fingers for several weeks, I wasn\u2019t able to reply to everyone. That made it difficult. But I have been thinking about your messages and about the support I received from the team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt has been a difficult period, because I crashed just as I had finished a big training block for the important races,\u201d concluded Matthews, who also shared several photos <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DXQ9i9UDNAQ\/?hl=nl&amp;img_index=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">on social media <\/a>showing the damage he suffered in the nasty crash.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We will have to do without him in the hilly Classics over the coming week, but fortunately things&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,121400,101,110231,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-539466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-michael-matthews","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-team-jayco-alula","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}