Matti Breschel will retire from professional cycling after a career that spanned nearly two decades at the highest level of the sport. He cited an ongoing struggle with psoriatic arthritis as the reason he will not continue racing beyond 2019, according to a press release from his EF Education First team. `It was a big relief to finally take the decision to retire, because I was struggling a lot to find good form, and the medicine I was taking really knocked me out. I was sleeping for 15 hours a day, it was super tiring, especially for the head,` Breschel said. `For me, it didn`t make sense to have a disease like that and keep on going as a professional bike rider. Especially the last two stages of the Giro d`Italia I rode. I was in a lot of pain and I thought to myself, `If I have to stop the Giro, I have to stop as a professional bike rider,` and that was when I took the final decision on stage 4, but I had been thinking about it a lot between February until May.`ADVERTISEMENT Breschel struggled with chronic pain due to psoriatic arthritis since the Spring Classics. In consultation with his team doctor and family physician, he received treatment to help ease the symptoms of his condition to no avail. He abandoned the Giro d`Italia in May and has only competed in the one-day Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic since. The problematic symptoms have persisted, and Breschel decided to retire from the sport to focus on his health. `He`s got a lot of passion,` said Charly Wegelius, director at EF Education First. `I saw him in London recently [at the Prudential Ride London-Surrey Classic], and he had hardly slept for two days before the race because he was so excited about it. We know he has a lot of passion, and sometimes people can be a victim of that and not see things for what they are. `But I think he`s tried so hard to deal with the sickness he has and to work through it, but eventually he`s just looked at it and said, `I can`t do this anymore`, and as ...
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