Chloé Dygert said she could have “very easily walked away” from cycling without family and friends to help her as she endured a litany of injuries and illnesses over the last two seasons.
Dygert lacerated her left quadricep, cutting through 80 percent of the muscle, in September 2020. She competed just four times the following season at the U.S. TT champs and the Olympic Games.
Having signed for Canyon-SRAM before the 2021 season, she made her debut with the team in 2022, but it was cut short when she contracted the Epstein-Barr virus. A second surgery on her leg ended the season and a subsequent problem with her heart put the start of this year on hold.
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“It was hard. I don’t want to make excuses or go into too much detail, because don’t want to make excuses, or make me sound weak. But there were times where my life didn’t matter to me anymore,” Dygert told Velo. “There were not good days, it was hard. The crash itself, it took everything in my body to be able to want to even compete at the Olympic Games. The pain that I had until I had this last surgery, I never thought I was going to be okay again, I never thought I was going to be at the top level again.
“With that thought in my head, I got Epstein Barr and then my heart kept having the issues that I had. I never thought that I was going to give up, but I just never thought I was going to be 100 percent again. That was a hard thought for me because I am so competitive and the thought of not being able to perform at the best I know I can.
“There were a lot of other personal things going on that I won’t share, but it was just it was a very hard time in my life. It really was. There were so many people that stood by my side through that entire process. Without them, I very easily could have walked away from the sport forever.”
It wasn’t all bad for Dygert last year and there was some light in the dark patches and a second surgery on her leg in August 2022 removed a long section of scar tissue that had developed inside the muscle. It proved to be a decision that would have an immeasurable benefit to her day-to-day life, let alone the racing.
Prior to the surgery, Dygert had been in daily pain and she had thought that she would have to live with the pain for the rest of her life. While there are still issues with her leg that are unlikely to completely disappear, the pain is no longer what it used to be.
“That surgery was life-changing. Not just on my bike, but in everyday life. It’s silly stuff, like, I can sit down on a toilet and not hurt, I can get in and out of my car and not hurt, I can put on pants and not hurt, I can put socks on and not hurt,” she said. “I thought that’s just how life is going be forever, and that surgery took away all that pain, all of it. But again, the muscle was completely severed and so the blood flow is not the same, and never will be the same.
“I still can’t sit on my heels. There are things I can’t do, but I’m never going to use it as an excuse because I’m riding again, I’m healthy. I’m here. I have pain but it’s nowhere near what it was last year and I’m just forever grateful for that surgery.”
Becoming a different person
Between the operations on her leg and on her heart, Dygert has had her fair share of surgeries over the last two years. While she can’t say that she won’t have to have any more, she’s hopeful that she won’t need another one on her injured leg at least.
“I think it will depend. At the beginning of the year, when I had a crash, at a team camp, I kind of shot into a rock wall, and I hit my leg pretty hard,” Dygert said. “I ended up getting another huge chunk of scar tissue. It was about two inches long and about two centimeters thick, and it was sitting on top of the muscle. That shouldn’t have had any effect inside the muscle. The scar tissue previously that Dr. Klaus took out was inside the muscle. You have to open up the muscle to be able to take that out. So, unless something forms inside the muscle or something happens again, where the muscle is, it’s going to be like that.”
Dygert has been a dominant talent in U.S. cycling and is used to having things go her way. That hasn’t happened in the last two years and the repeated setbacks have really tested her limits as a rider and a person.
In spite of her success, the 26-year-old has been a contentious figure in cycling in recent seasons following her use of social media. She was forced to issue an apology after screenshots emerged of tweets that she liked that said “white privilege doesn’t exist” and another espousing anti-transgender sentiment.
Though Dygert doesn’t talk publicly about these matters, keeping her cards closer to her chest, she says that the experience of coming back from her injuries and illness has changed her as a person.
“I really believe that this was part of God’s plan for me. In a way, it’s made me such a better person on and off the bike. How I interact with people, and how I treat people, and I think it’s all around made me a better person and I’m truly grateful. I wouldn’t take it back,” she said.
“I don’t regret any anything in my life, I wouldn’t take anything back, but I’m so proud to be where I am now, with everything that I’ve gone through. I’m just so grateful. I really, truly am. And there are so many people on the sidelines that have stayed by my side, and they are a huge reason to why I am here today.”
Dygert hit the ground running on her return to road racing last month and, after several second and third-place finishes, she notched up her first WorldTour win at the RideLondon Classique. Her performances have surprised even herself and she says that one of the big drivers in getting back to the sport was to figure out what she could do on a bike.
“I don’t really know where my potential is. I don’t think my coaches do, because I’ve just I’ve not raced enough. I’ve never given the time to actually figure it out,” Dygert said. “I don’t want to put limits on anything that I could do, because at the beginning of the year, I could tell you I’m not a climber, like seeing the climbs, and in Burgos, there’s no way I’m going to make it [Dygert finished fourth overall at the Vuelta a Burgos -ed].
“I adjust things, I guess I would surprise myself in certain things that I’m able to do. But you know, I think that’s just not putting limitations on myself and that’s able to let me push a little bit harder to be able to just try to go for everything,” she said.
“That’s another great thing about this team is the just belief and trust that everybody has in me, and everybody else to be able to try and do all kinds of things in a race to see how we can get to the line in first.”