It was September 11th, two days before I was due to fly to Australia for the 2022 World Cup, when it happened. I woke up feeling like I had drunk a lot the night before – I was sick and my legs were twitching. I didn’t understand it because at that moment I was healthy and in the best shape of the entire season. My husband Vincent told me not to panic and he came back to the bedroom with an orange juice for me, but as soon as I drank it I felt sick all over and didn’t stop vomiting for several minutes. Also, my head was spinning and my legs kept cramping.
I knew immediately that something was wrong and asked my husband to call an ambulance. I arrived at the hospital and started vomiting again, but the doctors couldn’t find the cause of the problem despite numerous tests. I got back in the car and told my husband that I thought I had had a stroke. His mother died of a stroke, so that word is a total taboo for him. He looked at me: “Come on, Audrey, stop,” he said.
Later that day, the French Cycling Federation called me: “We want you to take a later flight to Australia and have an MRI scan before your flight,” they told me. At that point, I was feeling fine and would have taken the original flight, but I accepted. The next morning, I went for the MRI appointment and the doctor, who I knew because he also works in cycling, said he would be finished in ten minutes, but after 20 minutes, I was still lying on that cold couch. And then another ten minutes went by. “Is the machine working?” I asked. Finally, he said, “Audrey, this is something I didn’t expect, but you’ve had a stroke.” I couldn’t hear him very well – my brain refused to listen. I looked at my husband and he was white, all pale.
Once we had calmed down, the doctor said we needed to find out why I had had a stroke and what they could do to make sure I didn’t have another one. It was horrible because I was perfectly healthy, a professional athlete about to compete in a world championship, and instead I was going to spend a week in hospital surrounded by old, frail people doing tests to make sure I would live another day. Not knowing what had caused the stroke stressed me out and I was extremely negative, thinking I might die if I had another one.
Then the doctors made one last attempt to find out the cause: they inserted a tiny camera into my neck and discovered a small hole through which a blood clot had entered my brain. They told me that I had had this small clot for over 30 years without any problems and that this small blood clot had traveled to my feet, but this time it had reached my brain. It was scary, but also a relief to finally have answers and an explanation. Less than six weeks later, I had heart surgery to close the small hole.
I had never ridden a bike before then and at the beginning of November I went to Martinique with my family. There I rode a 100km race eight weeks and one day after my stroke. I was slow, behind, alone and finished after five hours but when I crossed the finish line my whole family was waiting for me. It was a very emotional moment, a memory I will never forget because that was the start of my comeback and since that ride and the operation I have never thought about having another stroke again. In my mind I was the same Audrey as before.
That winter I signed with Zaaf, but as everyone knows, it was a disaster. Human Powered Health signed me in April, and in September I was part of the French team that won the European Mixed Relay Time Trial Championships in the Netherlands. That was really special because the national team saved my life by giving me an MRI scan before I flew to Australia. If I hadn’t done that, I could have died on the plane there. But my main goal, which had motivated me since before my stroke, was to compete in the Olympic Games in Paris.
I hope my story is a lesson for cycling. All WorldTour teams and national federations require their athletes to have a heart scan every year, but these little holes are not visible on normal heart scans, only on precise MRI scans. The doctors explained to me that other people with similar conditions to mine may have mini-strokes that last 10 minutes, but that they mostly get on with their lives and don’t investigate further. But then the larger, potentially fatal stroke can occur a few weeks later.
In teams we talk about concussions, but never strokes. Why not? Like concussions, it’s a brain disease. All the stroke symptoms you see on TV commercials – like one-sided paralysis – are just symptoms of male strokes. The stroke symptoms in women are different, but hardly anyone knows what they are. What if this happens to another driver and they don’t know the signs to spot it?
Strokes don’t just happen to old people, they happen to young, fit and healthy people too – I’m proof of that. After what happened to me, so many young people – cyclists, triathletes, runners – have written to tell me about their own strokes. It affects more people and more athletes than we think or realise. Not only are concussions and heart problems serious issues, but so are strokes. My message to cycling is that we need to take this seriously, starting with informing and educating people about the symptoms of stroke in women. Because if we don’t, the consequences can be fatal.
– Audrey
Read more from the series “In My Words” Here.
