"Andy Coggan" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:There is nothing here to suggest use of drugs. The unfortunate truth is that, although rare,
cardiac-related sudden death does occur in young individuals, both at rest and during exercise.
Only if you could show that the rate of such events was statistically greater than expected would
there
Quoted message said:be any reason for speculation.
Andy Coggan
Perhaps nothing. A quick search came up with the following:
www-unix.oit.umass.edusdathlete.htmOpen ↗ Basketball and football were the two
sports most represented among the athletes described in both studies. This is in part due to the
relatively larger numbers of youth and young adults who participate in these sports. Overall, 12
sports for males and 6 for females were represented in the study of high school and college
athletes. Nevertheless, the occurrence of non-traumatic sports death is rare. The estimated rates
for non-traumatic sports death in high school and college athletes are 7.5 and 1.3 per million
athletes participating per year in males and females, respectively. Interestingly, the estimated
rate is higher among college male athletes than among high school male athletes, 14.5 and 6.6 per
million athletes participating per year, respectively.
According to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, 100,000 young athletes die each year from
all cardio-vascular disorders, including cardiomyopathy, as a result of participation in sports.
This is twice as many as die in auto accidents. Of the 100,000 who die annually, 45,000 of them play
basketball, not boxing or football.............Coronary artery disease is the major cause of
exercise-related cardiovascular complications in adults, while in younger people the cause is
congenital abnormality. The incidence of exercise death is low; approximately 0.75 per 100,000 young
male athletes and .13 per 100,000 young female athletes. About six per 100,000 middle-aged men die
during exertion each year.
sciencenews.orgbob1.htmOpen ↗ Despite the low absolute risk of cardiac problems
during exercise in previously healthy men, the death rate per hour of exercise increases as activity
continues. In a study in Rhode Island, for example, the relative risk of sudden death was seven
times higher during jogging than during other activities.
Most are young athletes who harbor one of these cardiovascular defects from birth, Maron said at a
New York press briefing held by the American Medical Association. Such defects "usually cause no
symptoms prior to the catastrophe," he added. Maron and his colleagues detail their findings in the
July 17 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
They collected information on sudden deaths in athletes from 1985 through 1995. The probe turned up
158 such deaths, 134 of them with a cardiovascular origin.
The athletes ranged in age from 12 to 40. The largest group, 83 of the 134, was competing in high
school sports. However, the series included 16 athletes who had achieved national or international
fame in their sport. Sudden death felled the greatest number of young athletes in basketball and
football. It also struck track, soccer, and baseball players and a few in eight other sports.
The most common cardiovascular disease identified as responsible for sudden death was an inherited
condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a finding in line with previous research. In
this disorder, caused by any one of several mutated genes, the heart's main pumping chamber, the
left ventricle, is abnormally thick.
The researchers were surprised to find that HCM was responsible for 48 percent of the sudden deaths
in black athletes and just 26 percent of the deaths in white athletes. Earlier medical studies of
HCM suggested that blacks rarely suffer from it. Maron thinks it possible that blacks with this
genetic condition don't get a correct diagnosis as often as their white counterparts.
heart1.com1Open ↗ "Sudden Death on Sports Field" Wall Street Journal
Rhonda L. Rundle
JAMA 2002 Mar 13;287(10):1308-20 Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: a systematic review. Maron BJ.
J Am Coll Cardiol 2002 Oct 16;40(8):1431-6 Physiologic limits of left ventricular hypertrophy in
elite junior athletes: relevance to differential diagnosis of athlete's heart and hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy. Sharma S, Maron BJ, Whyte G, Firoozi S, Elliot PM, McKenna WJ
Personal Communication, Arista Star, President & Founder of The Chad Foundation for Athletes
and Artists
livingheartfoundation.orgcolumbiaresults.htmlOpen ↗
wispolitics.compr02020806.htmlOpen ↗
columbia.edufootball screening.htmlOpen ↗
ncsl.orgaed.htmOpen ↗
Several of these recently dead cyclists died in their sleep, not while under performance
stress. Were their deaths related to the inhereted risk factors noted above? And how do
their deaths statistically compare to other athletic endeavors?
Unfortunately, elite road cycling has several factors that point to possible non-natural
causes, such as:
1. History of doping in the sport with drugs that can cause heart problems. (eg. 18+ young Duth
cyclists dead from heart attacks while sleeping in the late 1980s-early 1990s)
2. Abuse of steroids admitted by more than a few riders, Thevenet being but one example.
3. The discovery of designer steroids that may be involved but no means of testing for them
except for thc.
It may just be a bad year for elite level cycling heart disease. But then consider Laurent Fignon's
statement in the current issue of Cycle Sport,
"The whole world thinks that we are all doped our whole lives, which is totally false. They can
say what they want. Perhaps I was doped, but that is only my concern. I endured, I was serious
and I did what I had to do. If I die when I am 50, that's my problem." And a problem widows and
surviving children.
Let them dope, but set up that fund for the survivors.
