Geelong cyclist Chloe McConville came close to dying when a blood-clot went undetected

CHLOE McConville struggles to comprehend how close she came to dying without even knowing it.

Chloe McConville is a professional road cyclist who represents the Jayco-AIS team, which

CHLOE McConville struggles to comprehend how close she came to dying.

But the fact is that the ­Geelong-based professional road cyclist was on death’s door without even knowing it.

McConville was racing in Europe last month when she contracted deep vein thrombosis, with blood clots forming behind her knee and in her calf.

Those clots then broke off and migrated to both of her lungs, leading to a life-threatening pulmonary embolism, which wasn’t diagnosed until her fourth visit to a doctor.

“I don’t think it really twigged that I had actually been pretty close to not being here,” McConville said.

The 26-year-old was being poisoned from the inside, but such was her level of fitness that she was still competing.

McConville emerged from a 10-hour car trip from Italy to Belgium in early April with sore ribs she assumed came from an uncomfortable sleep.

But when she had to withdraw from a race the next day after 10km she sought medical opinion. She was given the all-clear, with the doctor ­believing she was struggling with ­allergy-induced asthma.

Then came the Energiewacht Tour in the Netherlands where, despite her condition, she incredibly finished second on a stage.

“I thought I was just hurting because I was off the front. The whole week I had a really tight left calf, but I put it down to the high intensity of racing and new shoes,” McConville said.

Put on strong asthma drugs, she then entered another Dutch race, the Ronde van Gelderland, but pulled out after 70km with wheezing.

“Every time the hammer went down in a race I just started going backwards,” she said.

“I was going from the front 20 riders back through 150 ­riders to the very back in 2km. At this point I started seriously doubting my abilities as a bike rider.”

McConville then woke on the morning of La Fleche Wallonne with groin pain so severe she struggled to walk down stairs and had to withdraw.

Cue another check-up and the verdict she had a bad virus. But after a night of aching, nausea and sweating, McConville’s fourth doctor visit — this time to Holland’s national sports centre — led to a correct ­diagnosis.

“The doctor said he had never seen anyone with that much of a clot in both sides still walking around, let alone riding a bike,” she said.

Blood-thinning medication means McConville can’t ride a bike on the road for six months, ruling her out of the Commonwealth Games.

“Emotionally, that’s been really hard,” she said.