‘I said to myself I’m done with cycling’ - Matthews on the crash that shattered both arms

Michael Matthews had just returned from a three-week altitude training camp in Tenerife when he crashed on 5 March. He had spent weeks living and training on the volcano, following a strict routine, and returned home with some of the best form of his career.

“From that moment to ending up in a helicopter with life-threatening injuries was the biggest high to the biggest low that you can imagine in someone’s life,” Matthews said on the Domestique Hotseat.

On the way to hospital, he made a decision.

“I can remember when I was in a helicopter flying from the scene of the crash to the hospital. I was saying to myself that I’m done with cycling. This was it.”

Jayco AlUla initially reported fractures to both wrists, but the full extent of his injuries was far worse: an open fracture in his left arm, a broken wrist, a broken thumb with severed tendons and a fractured eye socket. He underwent two separate surgeries.

“Laying on the ground with both my arms completely shattered and my face in pieces,” he said. “Yeah, not sure what the hell happened.”

The crash ruled him out of the entire spring campaign, including Paris-Nice, the cobbled Classics, the Ardennes and Milan-San Remo, the race around which he had built his Tenerife training camp.

“I had dreams of really trying to win Milan-San Remo this year and I really thought it was possible to fight for that victory.”

What ultimately changed his mind about retiring was having a new target to work towards.

“My wife knows me really well that I’m a very goal-driven person. I need something to work towards. Without that it would have been very difficult,” Matthews said. “We had that goal to come back for the Tour de France and that was the goal we set pretty much straight away.”

Four weeks after the crash, he was back on an indoor trainer. His first outdoor rides came on a gravel bike with casts on both arms, two weeks before he was able to return to the road.

But getting back outside was a daunting prospect, and Matthews credits his wife with helping him overcome that fear.

“I was quite scared to get back on the road, and she just said, well, the more you think about it, the more it’s going to be worse. So just go out and do it. You’ve been doing it your whole life. The crash was not your fault,” he said.

“I think a big factor is when the crash was your fault, it’s definitely probably more difficult to get back on the bike. She was right. It’s pretty brutal at the time.”

Matthews did not work with a mental coach during his recovery and says he had no desire to do so.

“I honestly just tried to switch it off. Just focus on what I needed to do that day in training. That was my focus rather than thinking about the crash, which I think helped me to not overthink it. If I thought about it too much, then I probably wouldn’t have got back on the bike.”

He returned to racing at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes on 7 June, just over three months after the crash. He went on to line up at the Tour de France Grand Départ in Barcelona before finishing second at the World Championships in Montréal in September.

His comeback followed another major setback in 2025, when a pulmonary embolism forced him to miss the Tour de France.

“What I’ve been through the last two years to continue fighting back to this level, to compete with some of the best cyclists of all time,” he said. “There’s not much more I could really do.”

Listen to the full episode of the Domestique Hotseat with Michael Matthews 👇