"Last season was difficult..." Patrik Herčzík evaluates the 2023 season

Patrik Herčzík, the best Czech competitor in the Classic Physique division, who fought his way to the Olympia last year and became the first Czech ever to compete at the Classic Physique Olympia, had his second birth at the end of last year as he was struggling with a serious health problem. Doctors diagnosed him as a survivor of a pulmonary embolism!

He expressed himself about the whole incident on his social media, specifically writing the following:

Three days ago I woke up in the morning with a "pulled calf" feeling nothing special I would say. It's just a subtle pain that tugs at your subconscious but is still manageable. Two days ago, the pain started to build up and spread even further into the hamstring socket. Walking slowly turned into a kind of robotic spasmodic movements. One day back, the pain of 3/4 of the leg was joined by swelling and walking was no longer walking, or even walking, but rather flamingo hopping accompanied by painful moaning. At that point, it was clear to me that it wasn't a pulled muscle. However, the next day I was due for a check-up after the umbilical hernia (which, by the way, is healing wonderfully) and the removal of stitches, so I decided to wait out the evening and share the pain in the morning during the check-up......

At the check-up the diagnosis was clear: thrombosis from the ankle down the length of the vein to 10cm below the groin. A transfer followed (as the presidentdrives through red lights, a personal driver and all to the accompaniment of a siren) to the hospital in the neck.....CT examination and with the final verdict of "subsegmental to segmental bilateral pulmonary embolism" I drudge it up on a recliner with a smile on my face towards a week's holiday in the ICU. To put it simply, after surgery, a vein became blocked, from which a piece of the clot reached my lungs and caused a pulmonary embolism of no small magnitude, which I survived. With a huge fear of it happening again (which I probably wouldn't have survived without early intervention), they are keeping me under observation.

And just four days ago, a new video was posted on Patrick's YouTube, in which he evaluates last season in great detail. In the video, Patrik will take you through each race he competed in and at the same time he will try to give you an idea of the atmosphere that prevailed at the races.