Doctors detect life-threatening pulmonary embolism just in time for Matthews: "I probably would’ve not survived"

Matthews won 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. “During 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,” 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, Matthews is back on soil where he has already been successful four times. In North America, he spoke to Rouleur for the first time about the recent period.

“The doctors said that if I'd done the same training at altitude for another two to three days, I probably would’ve not survived,” Matthews begins the intense story. The fast man was on an altitude training camp when he started experiencing symptoms. “One day I was doing altitude training like I normally do, and the next day I was in hospital.”

“I 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.”

That turned out not to be the case: the pain got worse, while Bling continued to train."‘I 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."

There, it turned out that it wasn't an allergy. “After 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.” 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.