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.
“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.”
“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.”
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