It was September 11, two days before I was supposed to fly to Australia for the 2022 World Championships, when it happened. I woke up and felt like I’d drank really heavily the night before – I felt sick and my legs were twitching. I didn’t understand because at that moment I was healthy and in my best shape of the entire season. My husband, Vincent, told me not to panic and he came back into the bedroom with an orange juice for me, but as soon as I drank it, I was sick everywhere and didn’t stop vomiting for several minutes. My head was also spinning and my legs continued to spasm.
I immediately knew that something was very wrong so I asked my husband to call an ambulance. I got to the hospital and had another episode of vomiting, but the doctors, despite doing so many checks, couldn’t find the source of the problem. I got back in the car and told my husband that I thought I’d had a stroke. His mum died from a stroke so this word is a big no-no for him. He looked at me: “come on, Audrey, stop it,” he said.
Later that day, the French Federation called: “We want you to take a later flight to Australia and have an MRI scan before you fly,” they said. I felt fine at that point and would have taken the original flight, but accepted. I went to the MRI appointment the next morning, and the doctor, who I knew as he also works in cycling, said he’d be done scanning within 10 minutes, but after 20 minutes I was still lying down on this cold bed. And then another 10 minutes passed. “Is the machine working?” I asked. Eventually, he said, “Audrey, this is something I wasn’t expecting to find, but you have had a stroke.” I didn’t hear him well – my brain was refusing to listen. I looked at my husband and he was white, completely pale.
Once we’d calmed down, the doctor said that we needed to understand why I’d had a stroke, and what they could do to make sure I didn’t have a second one. It was horrible because I was super-healthy, a professional sportswoman about to go to a world championships, and instead I was about to spend a week in hospital surrounded by old, frail people doing tests to ensure that I would see another day. Not knowing the cause of the stroke stressed me out, and I was super negative about everything, thinking I might die if I had another one.
The doctors then had one final go at finding out why it had occurred: they put a tiny camera down my throat and they found that there was a little hole and a blood clot had gone through this little hole and up into my brain. They told me that for more than 30 years I’d had this little clot without any issues, and up until then this little ball of blood would have gone to my feet, but this time it went up to my brain. It was scary but a relief to finally have answers and an explanation. Just under six weeks later, I had heart surgery to plug the small hole.
I still hadn’t ridden a bike up until that point, and in early November I went to Martinique with my family. While there, I rode a 100km sportive, eight weeks and one day after my stroke. I was slow, dropped, alone, and I finished in five hours, but when I crossed the line all of my family were waiting for me. It was a very emotional moment, a memory that I’ll always remember because that was the start of my comeback, and since that ride and surgery I’ve never, ever thought about having another stroke. In my mind, I was the same Audrey as before.
That winter, I signed for 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 team time trial mixed relay championships in the Netherlands. It was really special because the national team saved my life by making me have an MRI scan before flying to Australia. If I hadn’t, I could have died on the plane out there. Yet the main goal that has been keeping me motivated since even before my stroke was to compete at the Paris Olympics.
I hope my story will be a lesson for cycling. All WorldTour teams and national federations oblige athletes to have a heart scan every year, but these little holes are not visible on normal heart check-ups, only on precise MRI scans. The doctors explained to me that other people with something similar might experience mini-strokes that last 10 minutes, like I did, but that they will mostly continue on with their life and not investigate it further. But that’s when the bigger, potentially deadly stroke can come a few weeks later.
In teams, we talk about concussion, but never, ever about strokes. Why not? Like concussion, it’s a brain disease. All the stroke symptoms you can think of from the TV adverts – such as being paralysed on one side – are only symptoms of male strokes. Female stroke symptoms are different, but barely anyone has any knowledge of what they are. What if this happens to another rider and they don’t know the signs to spot it?
Strokes don’t only happen to old people, but to the young, fit, and healthy – I’m proof of that. After what happened to me, so many young people – cyclists, triathletes, runners – messaged to tell me about their own strokes. It affects more people and more sportspeople than we think or realise. It’s not only concussion and heart issues that are serious problems, but also strokes. My message to cycling is that we must take this seriously, starting with informing and educating people what the symptoms of strokes are for females. Because if we don’t, the consequences can be fatal.
- Audrey
You can read more about heart attack and stroke symptoms in women here
You can read more from the In My Words series here.
