England’s most-capped player Ben Youngs reveals he has undergone heart surgery after collapsing in training earlier this year

Ben Youngs has revealed that he is recovering from heart surgery after fearing the worst when he suffered a medical scare during an open training session at Leicester.

The 34-year-old scrum-half had a two-hour operation in Birmingham, having been diagnosed with arrhythmia and supraventricular tachycardia. 

England’s most-capped men’s player – who made a record-breaking 127 Test appearances for his country – expects to be fit for the start of next season, and the Tigers veteran is relieved that under-lying conditions have been discovered and resolved.

Speaking on his podcast with club-mate Dan Cole, For the Love of Rugby, Youngs opened up about the sudden ordeal, saying: ‘We had this open training session at Leicester. I collapsed. Well, I had to stop and lay down as my heart was pounding away. 

‘The rain was hitting me in the face, I rolled my head to the side and looked at all these admiring fans – 30 of them – that were in the main stand at Leicester. And I thought: ‘This is it; this is how I’m gonna go.

The incident saw Youngs (pictured, in his final England game against Argentina in October) fall to the ground with his heart beating quickly as some 30 fans watched on from the main stand

‘I basically had a few of these episodes and I’ve had it my whole life. It can just kind of spontaneously happen at any stage of your life or career. So, I’ve had it my whole life, unknown to me.’

Youngs had another ‘pretty horrible’ episode while running on a treadmill, after being fitted with a monitoring device on his chest. The readings taken by the device provided firm proof of his diagnosis and he had surgery.

‘It’s a good thing this happened during the off-season, because I can get fixed and the recovery time is not long at all,’ he added. ‘There’s 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.

‘It’s probably a good thing. It’s been caught now. Imagine in 10 years’ time, you’re just having a kick around in the garden with the kids or the grandkids and something like that happens. It’s sort of panic stations, whereas we’re fortunate to be exposed to good medics and it’s been looked at now for a long-term health thing.’