England’s most-capped player Ben Youngs has revealed he underwent heart surgery after collapsing during an open training session.
Leicester scrum-half Youngs says he is “on the mend” and hopes to be fit for the new season which begins in mid-September.
Youngs, 34, had been diagnosed with arrhythmia and supraventricular tachycardia, which is a type of irregular heartbeat that causes the heart’s upper chamber to beat fast or erratically.
He had a two-hour operation in Birmingham following the episode while training with Leicester earlier this year.
“You know when we joked around on the pod quite a while back, and we had this open training session at Leicester, and I said I was doing fitness, and basically I collapsed,” Youngs said on the For The Love Of Rugby podcast he co-hosts with Tigers colleague Dan Cole.
“Well, not collapsed, but I had to stop and lay down as my heart was pounding away, and the rain was hitting me in the face, and I sort of rolled my head to the side and looked at all these admiring fans – 30 of them – that were all packed out in the main stand at Leicester.
“And I thought: ‘This is it, this is how I’m gonna go’.
“I basically had a few of these episodes and I’ve had it my whole life. And it can just kind of spontaneously happen at any stage of your life or career. And so I have had it my whole life, unknown to me.”
Youngs, who won 127 caps before retiring from Test rugby after the 2023 World Cup, added: “I’ve had a couple of episodes throughout my career but have always been checked up and we get the best medical care.
“The club have been amazing, as they so often are with anything like this. I got checked the first time it happened, (then) a second time it happened again.
“I am on the mend, I am recovering. I’ll be fine for the start of the season.
“There is a 90 per cent success rate, so I should not suffer now. My ticker should be all good and it won’t suddenly kick in and go mental.”