Zara Tindall's husband Mike Tindall, 43, retired from rugby in 2014, but before he stepped down from the sport, he suffered some serious injuries - including one that could have killed him.
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The former sportsman, who played for Bath and Gloucester during his career, was injured in a Six Nations match against Wales in 2008. A tackle left him with a misplaced rib then punctured his lung and tore a hole in his liver.
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Following the ordeal, Mike was in intensive care for three nights and explained to The Daily Mail: "If the boot had struck me an inch or two higher or lower then I would just have cracked a couple of ribs.
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"That's not very pleasant, and I would have been out of rugby for a few weeks, but I would have settled for that in light of what happened instead."
He shared that his opponent's boot hit his diaphragm and sternum, while the studs caught his liver.
© Photo: Getty ImagesMike Tindall played rugby for England
"At first, I thought I'd just done my ribs, albeit badly. My immediate thought was that at least a couple had been broken. But what really worried me was the fact that I was struggling desperately to breathe," Mike recalled.
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"At the time I didn't gauge how serious a condition I was in," he said. "It turns out I had a big tear in my liver. It was more than an inch wide and about an inch deep.
© Photo: Getty ImagesZara Tindall stayed by Mike's bedside as he recovered
"The biggest concern was my internal bleeding. I lost two pints of blood into my membrane and if it had leaked out much more and floated around in my stomach then I would have been in big trouble."
Mike eventually made a full recovery after several weeks of recovery, during which he supported his then-girlfriend Zara as she trained for an eventing competition in Portugal.
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