After 10 seasons as a professional, Umberto Poli is closing his cycling career. But it wasn't a planned decision and not the ending the Veronese rider wanted: "I risked dying, that's why I'm quitting" Poli told Renzo Puliero of L'Arena.

Physical problems emerged last summer: "We were at the second stage of the Tour of Denmark, an important race for our sponsor Novo Nordisk: for us it's somewhat like the Tour. There's only flat terrain, but for some time now I've been feeling unwell, I'm not doing well, I get tired quickly. My team tells me: stay in the middle of the group and bring the bike to the finish line. I try, I try again, I can't do it, I withdraw"

Looking back, Poli explains: "I was coming back from a training camp in Livigno, I worked with several fellow riders, but I wasn't feeling 100 percent. I was struggling to breathe, I was seeing black, I had hyperventilation and tachycardia. After years on a bike, an athlete can tell if their body isn't responding well. I was struggling much more than last year, it wasn't normal. Already in Turkey, in April there had been some symptoms, but I had to go to Denmark. I go slowly already in the first stage. My team tells me: it's adaptation to the flat terrain after altitude. But I felt that wasn't the reason".

After withdrawing in the second stage, Poli returns home, undergoes tests and calls Luca Pollastri, the doctor who has been following him for 10 years and has all his medical records. "Over the years I had two episodes of thrombosis, but with all tests coming back negative. This time the D-dimer value, a protein that forms in the blood when the body breaks down a blood clot, which should be under 500, was 4500. The doctor tells me to go straight to the emergency room: "don't wait, there's a risk of pulmonary embolism". At Borgo Trento hospital they confirm it: bilateral pulmonary embolism, on both right and left sides, fortunately the artery wasn't involved. They tell me I risked a heart attack especially at altitude or during air travel and that, fortunately, an athlete's heart is larger than normal people's, with very large veins and so it held up. And they add: "it's better that you stop racing, especially because if you were to fall and suffer trauma, you'd be gone immediately". I discussed it with the team and our director Massimo Podenzana, so I closed my career".

Poli, born in 1996, started racing as a G1 and G2 rider with Luc Bovolone, then left cycling, practiced football, judo and tennis, before returning to cycling at 12-13 years old still with Luc, then with Remo Cordioli's group as a junior and "already halfway through the second year came the contract with Novo Nordisk in the USA: I was going to the hotel school in Porto di Legnago and commuting back and forth from Verona to the States".

Poli suffers from type 1 diabetes, like all members of his team which "demonstrates how diabetes is a disease to live with even while practicing high-level sport, without giving up on your dreams". Umberto has lived them. "I think about how fortunate I was to experience a cycling different from what there has been for 4-5 years where staying at the top is increasingly difficult. It remains a magnificent sport, but life is more important. I'm extremely happy: I'm 30 years old, 10 as a pro, I've traveled the world, I've discovered new places, different realities and cultures, supported by a good salary. I carry in my heart that day at the Milan-Sanremo, in 2017: I was the youngest at the start, I was in a breakaway for over 200 km and the next day Ernesto Colnago, we raced with his bikes, had invited me to spend a day with him. I have beautiful memories of Tours in Azerbaijan, Colorado, Utah. I never won, I didn't even come close, at most there were some top tens, never in the top five, but I have the gratitude of my captains, first Andrea Peron, then Mattias Kopecki, the last one Filippo Ridolfo and this tells me that I did my job well on the bike".