In the aftermath of England’s dramatic penalty shootout victory over Spain in the final of UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, Lucy Bronze stole headlines with a remarkable revelation.
Bronze, a 140-cap veteran and a stalwart of a glorious era for women’s football in England, had evidently played through the pain barrier to help the Lionesses retain their European title.
The 33-year-old sported heavy strapping on her right leg before dispatching an emphatic spot kick to help down Sweden in the quarterfinals. During extra time in the final, Bronze’s right knee finally gave out, and she was substituted with 15 minutes remaining.
It turned out this was just the tip of a treatment room iceberg.
“I actually played the whole tournament with a fractured tibia, but no one knew,” the Chelsea defender told BBC Sport after completing 598 minutes during England’s campaign in Switzerland.
Pitched somewhere on the fine line between bravery and insanity, Bronze’s exploits have captured the imagination of a public always ready to fall for their next sporting superhero.
Although few would consider going to such lengths, the former Manchester City and Barcelona favourite joins a select band of sports stars who have gone through and beyond normal pain thresholds to claim glory
MORE: England vs. Spain score: Euro 2025 final result, stats as Lionesses retain title after penalties epic
Tiger Woods
It was common knowledge that Woods went into the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines with knee issues, and he grimmaced his way around what was the longest major championship course in golf history at that point.
Tiger drained an unforgettable birdie on the last to force a playoff against Rocco Mediate. In those days, a U.S. Open playoff necessitated another 18 holes between the tied players. They were still level after that, with Woods eventually prevailing on the first hole of sudden death, his 91st of the tournament overall.
Two days later, it emerged that Woods had not simply been dealing with lingering discomfort from arthroscopic surgery on his left knee. He was playing with a torn ACL and a double stress fracture of the tibia that he suffered during recovery from that operation. He missed the rest of the 2008 season.
Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff
England’s talismanic all-rounder Flintoff insisted there was “a lot of cricket left in me” when he announced his pending retirement from Tests before the second match of the 2009 Ashes series against bitter rivals Australia. Flintoff had undergone a succession of ankle and knee surgeries and headed into the game at Lord’s on a course of pain-killing injections.
Physically compromised, the hulking Lancastrian pulled out one more mesmeric performance from the depths. He ripped out five Australian wickets to secure a 115-run victory, sending down 90 mph rockets despite his diminished physical state. It came at a price, however, and Flintoff hobbled away from the sport after England wrapped up a 2-1 series triumph at The Oval later that summer.
“I’d never swap winning the Ashes, but that 2009 series finished my career, my knee was in bits,” he told The Wisden Cricketer magazine in 2011. “I played through four Tests, and the damage I did then has resulted in how I am now. I certainly never thought I’d play my last game of cricket aged 31. I had so many injections and painkillers in my knee just to get through that series. I’m glad I did, but obviously it has cost me.”
Mike Tyson
Heavyweight boxing icon Tyson is the only sportsperson in this list to match Bronze in terms of an eyebrow-raising soundbite. After demolishing Clifford Etienne inside a minute of his first fight back since losing to Lennox Lewis in 2002, ‘Iron Mike’ left Showtime’s in-ring interviewer Jim Gray utterly perplexed.
“I broke my back,” he said. When Gray asked Tyson to clarify the exact nature of the problem, he replied: “My back is broken,” before confirming the issue was “spinal.”
Tyson continued: “I was doing my situps, 2,500 a day with my 20-pound weight. One day I couldn’t move anymore. I asked the doctor, ‘What’s wrong?’ and he said, ‘Believe it or not, your back is broken slightly.’
It turned out Tyson’s condition was not quite as dramatic as he made it sound. Since 1997, he had been nursing back pain following a high-speed motorcycle accident that forced him to have surgery. This was the source of debilitating problems during training camp, and the Etienne blowout proved to be his last success as a professional.
“I have a bad back and since all of the work that I’ve put over the years, the spine in my back just starts shifting,” he explained in 2020. “I have to get the operation, but the doctor said [before the Etienne fight], ‘Hey, eventually you’re gonna have to start bending over.’ And so I was trying to explain my situation. I just wasn’t eloquent enough to explain it in the way I wanted it to be explained.”
Bert Trautmann
A Manchester City player more than six decades before Bronze stepped out for the English club, Trautmann went down in FA Cup folklore after he completed the 1956 FA Cup final against Birmingham City with a serious neck injury. City held onto their 3-1 lead, but their German goalkeeper was still compromised during the post-match celebrations following a collision with Birmingham player Peter Murphy, who caught him in his neck with a knee.
“The physio came on with the magic sponge and I came round a few minutes later, but I couldn’t recognise anybody or see properly,” Trautmann recalled in a piece for The Guardian in 2006 on the 50th anniversary of the final. “There were 15 minutes of the match remaining, and, in those days, you were not allowed substitutions, so I had to continue playing.
“It was such a strange sensation. I wasn’t seeing any colour — everything around me was grey and I couldn’t see any of the players properly. I could only see silhouettes. It was like walking around in fog and trying to find my way. I can’t remember what happened during the rest of the match. I know now that I made one or two more good saves, but it must just have been my subconscious taking over; everything was a blur of black and white.
“I collapsed two or three more times in those last 15 minutes. I was in absolute agony, and I was having to support my neck with my right hand. I couldn’t move my head at all — if I wanted to look at anything, I had to turn my whole body around with my hand on my neck.”
Three days later, with the pain not subsiding, Trautmann sought a second opinion from a doctor at Manchester Royal Infirmary, where it was discovered he had dislocated five vertebrae, the second of which had cracked in two.
Philip Rivers
Losing your starting quarterback for a championship game is never ideal, but the lengths the San Diego Chargers went to keep Rivers on the field for the AFC Championship showdown with the New England Patriots on January 20, 2008, are hard to comprehend.
The Chargers wheeled out their signal caller just six days after he suffered a torn ACL and meniscus damage in his right knee. In the circumstances, Rivers performed well, throwing two interceptions and completing 19 passes for 211 yards as New England won 21-12.
Only beating a team quarterbacked by a man with one working leg by nine points perhaps should have done more to foreshadow the Patriots throwing away an unbeaten season with their shocking 17-14 loss to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII.
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