Weightlifter Darren Holloway has become a champion after recovering from a life-threatening blood clot.

After spending a week in hospital and being told he should take things easy, he thought he might never lift again.

But six years on Darren, 35, has defied his critics and been crowned British Masters weightlifting champion.

Darren, who works as a computer programmer in Worth, near Crawley, said: "I got quite depressed about no longer being able to lift.

"It was my life from the age of 15. It taught me so much about respect and then it was taken away from me."

He discovered the clot after going to see an osteopath after tearing his Achilles tendon during the London to Brighton bike ride in 1996.

He says osteopath Paul Morrissey saved his life when he told him to go to hospital because his calf was hard.

He said: "They gave me a venogram where they injected dye into my leg. I remember lying there thinking I haven't got a blood clot and promised myself the biggest Chinese I could lay my hands on that night because I had been in hospital all day and was starving.

"They went on scanning right up to the top of my thigh before they found the clot. When they did find it all I could think of was I am not going to get my Chinese.

"I was in hospital for five days and put on warfarin to thin out the blood. I was on warfarin until 1997."

Darren was initially told he could do no exercise at all and had to wear a surgical stocking every day for two years.

He said: "I had a Tina Turner concert to go to about a week after being in hospital but when I asked the doctor he just looked at me and said there was no chance. He said I had to rest and be still.

"I did not realise the seriousness of it at the time. If I had carried on training it could have moved and killed me.

"There was a chap who used to train at the gym and one day I asked where he was. Someone said he had died of a clot.

"A cold sweat came over me and it made me realise how lucky I was because it could have been me."

Darren was allowed to go back and train at Cannons Gym in Worth to keep fit.

He said: "The doctors were a bit vague when I asked them what I could do. They said nothing at first. Later they said keeping fit was a priority but as for lifting, I didn't ask them because I didn't want them to say I couldn't do it."

Darren started weightlifting at school and entered the London Youth Games after leaving school and finding a club, where in a two-man team, he beat all the other entrants.

Darren said: "I continued lifting as a junior and then went into the seniors when I was 20. Then I competed on a national level until I was 28 when I was forced to give up.

"I had always thought when I was eligible for the Masters at 35 I would give it a go.

"In mid-January I went to the Southern Masters in Dartford where I qualified for the British and the Europeans.

"I had to do it. It has been 20 years in the making."

Darren, who is to marry fiancee Kate, 31, in May, was over the moon when he won the British championships. He is off to the European championships in May and hopefully the world championships in Australia, in October.