Bacterial infection nearly ended Woods' career: "Darkest moments of my career"

Wearing the Canadian champion's jersey, Michael Woods won the thirteenth stage of the Vuelta a España. It was another high point in the career of the 37-year-old climber, but it almost didn’t happen — he came close to ending his career.

At the start of this year, Woods struggled with his form. In the Giro d'Italia, nothing was going right: after five stages, the Israel-Premier Tech rider had to abandon the race. "Going into this year's Giro d'Italia, being at the Giro, and the week or so after it were probably the darkest moments of my cycling career," Woods admitted candidly in an interview with Yalla, his team’s magazine. "I really was starting to question if I was going to finish this season, I was really contemplating retiring. I was not performing at the level I wanted to be at."

"When I extended my contract with Israel-Premier Tech, I said to Sylvan (Adams, the team owner, ed.) that I'd only keep going if I was racing at my best. That was not the case, and I didn't have any answers as to why it was going so poorly, which made me think I should retire." Eventually, a breakthrough came: the Canadian climber was suffering from a bacterial infection. "I went back and rested at home in Canada, and I had a full series of tests. I found out that I had a bacterial infection. I picked it up at a training camp at the start of the season."

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Woods made comeback at National Championships: "A huge boost"

"The timeline makes sense," Woods continued. "I was flying at the end of that camp and into my first races, but after that I progressively got worse." After a significant period of rest, Woods made a comeback for the Canadian National Cycling Championships, and what a comeback it was: he won the national title for the first time. "It was a huge confidence boost. I hadn't raced since the Giro and I hadn't felt good in a race since February. I felt like I was hardly pedaling in the Nationals. That was a really nice sensation, that got me really hungry again." And that hunger led him to his third stage win at the Vuelta in Spain.