Pantani Dead

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Thought I was a curmudgeon...'bout bikes, afterall...

Peter Chisholm

<snip>

To paraphrase: I have posted with curmudgeons, sir, and you are no curmudgeon. Until your posts are
indistiguishable from Jobst's, I will refrain from categorizing you thusly.

Re: Pantani's passing: a sad end for a good competitor.

App

"Carl Fogel" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Benjamin Weiner <[email hidden]> wrote in message

news:<40306a8f$1@darkstar>...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Carl Fogel said:

Tim McNamara <[email hidden]> wrote in message

news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> ISTR a reference that in the 1970's some worldwide health

study found

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> that the life expectancy of pro cyclists was well below

average (like

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> 53 years). I've never been able find the original data,

though.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

procycling.comnews main.aspOpen ↗

Quoted message said:

It might be hard to find because it was French. It sounds as if it was a study of post-war
Tour de France riders.

Quoted message said:

I'm curious whether such studies connect the wide-spread drug use in professional bicycling
with shortened life-spans.

This topic is occasionally debated in rec.bicycles.racing.

Nobody has

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

ever given a reference to a trustworthy study that found that

ex-pro

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

cyclists have a short life expectancy, and there are several

reasons

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

why studies like the above are flawed. You can Google search

rbr for

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

"life expectancy" for details. Robert Chung has explained a

couple of

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

times why such studies would be quite hard to do right.

Here's

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

a pithy one:

ttp://groups.google.com/groups?q=life+expectancy+winners+group:rec.bicycles.racing&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-
8&scoring=r&selm=3C57EAEC.1B5C47B1%40nospam.com&rnum=3

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

A couple of obvious examples: The number of pro cyclists has

increased

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

greatly over the 20th century (faster than the population as

a whole I

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

expect). The majority of post-war Tour de France cyclists

are still

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

alive. Therefore the sample of dead cyclists is biased

towards people

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

who died young. You can't just compare to the population as

a whole

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

without controlling for the difference in distributions of

birthdates.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

(See Chung's post on the difference between longitudinal and

cohort

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

studies.)

I believe that the reference remembered by Tim is either an

urban

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

legend or statistically flawed.

Dear Benjamin,

The logic behind those arguments may need more explanation.

The number of pro cyclists may have increased (or decreased or remained the same) and may have
changed at a different rate than the population as a whole--but how does this affect their
predicted longevity?

The majority of post-war Tour de France cyclists may still be alive, but then so are the majority
of the people in the population as a whole who were born in the same year as the cyclists.

If pro cyclists born in 1956 are dying at a significantly different rate than my high school
class, then they're dying at a different rate.

A proper study is certainly tricky and tedious, but but given roughly 100 to 200 pros riding in
the post-war Tour every year for the last fifty years, it hardly seems impossible.

My spreadsheet shows an average of 151 riders starting the Tour each year from 1946 to 2003.
Obviously, many of the 8611 starters were duplicates, veterans riding the Tour again. But even if
we assume an absurdly high 10-Tour average, there would be 861 riders over 57 years.

Much of what I saw in those posts consisted of examples and counter-examples limited to Tour winners--
a group of only 30 riders over 57 years, too small to be significant because a single occurrence
may skew things wildly. (To cite the obvious example, testicular cancer does not strike 1 out of
30 men--the incidence is roughly 0.5% by the age of 75, 1 victim out of 200.)

Life insurance companies and pension funds do this sort of thing well enough to make money at it.
They have a fairly clear notion of the differences that you mention, so it would be interesting if
they've done a study. Unfortunately, professional bicyclists are a very small group, so they may
have been ignored as not being worth the trouble.

Incidentally, professional cyclists on the Tour probably do have a lower life-expectancy than the
population as a whole--simply because they're all men. Women are slightly more than half the
population and live 5-7 years longer, on average, in Europe and America.

What pathology are we talking about? The latest on Pantani is that he died of cerebral and pulmonary
edema of unknown etiology. AFIK, Cerebral and pulmonary edema occurring together are not the sort of
thing you see routinely in uninjured people living below the top of Mt. Everest -- although I have
heard of marathon runners getting pulmonary and cerebral edema due to a lack of sodium
(hyponatremia). There may be a cycling related cause for Pantani's death, but I certainly do no know
what it is. Without looking at the pathology, there really is no way of saying whether Pantani or
any other pro cyclist died due to a cycling-related cause as opposed to something else. The may just
be an unlucky populaiton. -- Jay Beattie.

John Everett said:

Sad about Marco

Agreed. I'm really sorry we won't be seeing him contending in the high mountains of the grand tours.

Quoted message said:

...but let me indulge my curmudgeonly side and ask what this has to do with techical issues?

Pantani was reputedly on the forefront of many technical advances in bicycle racing. Those advances
may have been chemical and illegal, but they were technical nonetheless.

dvt at psu dot edu

Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I would be surprised if that was so. The kind of things cyclists do to their bodies just aren't
that abusive: you don't hear of runners suffering short lifespans, just shin splints. Similarly,
soccer stars don't routinely drop dead, either.

Cycling is a no-impact sport, so possibly issue related to the lack of bone-density buildup come
into play (do a lot of old cyclists die of complications from broken hips?)

If you're looking recently, there were a disturbing number of young cyclists for a while who died
in their sleep of heart troubles. This is widely assumed to have been the result of EPO abuse, but
sometimes young athletes in all kinds of sports just drop dead, thanks to an undiagnosed heart
ailment or something similar.

It even happens to actors. Just ask John Ritter,

Dear Ryan,

John Ritter may be a poor example. He was 54, hardly young, and collapsed and died while working on
a hot stage, not in his sleep.

The usual description of how EPO kills is that it produces far more red blood cells than normal.
This helps endurance, but has the dangerous side effect of making the blood more viscous--thicker,
in layman's terms.

Any dehydration makes this even worse, something that has led to suspicion of EPO abuse among
marathon runners who refuse to compete when the temperature is predicted to rise above 85 degrees.

When an extremely fit young cyclist using EPO goes to sleep, his resting heart rate may drop down
into the 40's or so--barely idling, to use another layman's phrase. The theory is that the too-thick
blood presents too much resistance, so the victim dies quietly in his sleep, just as a cold, barely
idling engine dies if its normal 10-40w oil is replaced with thick 85-90w gear oil.

What raises suspicion of EPO is when young cyclists go to bed and wake up dead instead of collapsing
during competition. Much of the debate on these matters is anecdotal and poorly documented (try to
find the names of the dozens of Dutch and Belgian riders who died shortly after EPO became
available). Autopsies are, despite television, not terribly accurate--and if the drug testers can
barely deal with EPO, how is the ordinary coroner going to figure it out?

My impression is that young pro cyclists have been waking up dead or dying while doing nothing more
strenuous than walking around for about twenty years. I'd be interested if anyone knew of cyclists
dropping dead in the middle of races, where ordinary undiagnosed heart problems would seem to be
more likely to surface.

Carl Fogel

In article <[email hidden]>,

(Carl Fogel) said:

Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<rcousine-
[email hidden]>...

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I would be surprised if that was so. The kind of things cyclists do to their bodies just aren't
that abusive: you don't hear of runners suffering short lifespans, just shin splints. Similarly,
soccer stars don't routinely drop dead, either.

Cycling is a no-impact sport, so possibly issue related to the lack of bone-density buildup come
into play (do a lot of old cyclists die of complications from broken hips?)

If you're looking recently, there were a disturbing number of young cyclists for a while who
died in their sleep of heart troubles. This is widely assumed to have been the result of EPO
abuse, but sometimes young athletes in all kinds of sports just drop dead, thanks to an
undiagnosed heart ailment or something similar.

It even happens to actors. Just ask John Ritter,

Dear Ryan,

John Ritter may be a poor example. He was 54, hardly young, and collapsed and died while working
on a hot stage, not in his sleep.

The usual description of how EPO kills is that it produces far more red blood cells than normal.
This helps endurance, but has the dangerous side effect of making the blood more viscous--thicker,
in layman's terms.

Quoted message said:

My impression is that young pro cyclists have been waking up dead or dying while doing nothing
more strenuous than walking around for about twenty years. I'd be interested if anyone knew of
cyclists dropping dead in the middle of races, where ordinary undiagnosed heart problems would
seem to be more likely to surface.

Good points, all. This does distinguish typical cycling "heart failure" deaths from the rare collapse-on-the-
field deaths seen in other sports.

--
Ryan Cousineau, [email hidden] sfu.ca~rcousineOpen ↗ President, Fabrizio Mazzoleni Fan Club

Carl Fogel said:

The logic behind those arguments may need more explanation.

Carl, please do not say "may need" when you mean "I want"; eschew the passive voice.

Quoted message said:

The number of pro cyclists may have increased (or decreased or remained the same) and may have
changed at a different rate than the population as a whole--but how does this affect their
predicted longevity?

It affects the distribution of observed ages of death, because you aren't measuring the longevity of
all the ones still alive. Here is a very simple example. Suppose I have a bunch of pathological
bunnies. 1/4 of these bunnies live 1 year and 3/4 of them live 5 years. Over a long period of time
(several times greater than 5 years) the average age of death of the bunny population approaches 4
years. Suppose I look at a biased-young cohort of bunnies born two years ago. All the ones that died
were 1 year old, much less than the average. Holy [censored], these bunnies are on dope! Well, not really.
This is the problem with the "average age of death = 53" apocryphal result cited earlier. You can
get around that by looking at the incidence of dying young in a subgroup versus the general
population, but again you have to control for the distribution of birthdates.

Quoted message said:

The majority of post-war Tour de France cyclists may still be alive, but then so are the majority
of the people in the population as a whole who were born in the same year as the cyclists.

Quoted message said:

If pro cyclists born in 1956 are dying at a significantly different rate than my high school
class, then they're dying at a different rate.

Now you're controlling for the distribution of birthdates, which is the right thing to do, but much
more of a pain. People writing newspaper articles are unlikely to do this. Don't forget to control
for economic status, which is correlated with life expectancy - traditionally I believe many
European professionals have been from poor and working class backgrounds.

Quoted message said:

A proper study is certainly tricky and tedious, but but given roughly 100 to 200 pros riding in
the post-war Tour every year for the last fifty years, it hardly seems impossible.

Very well, Carl, I commission you to do it. I actually think even with that total sample number it
might be difficult to get a statistically meaningful result, since the early deaths are still a
small percentage of the total.

On 16 Feb 2004 14:17:46 GMT, [email hidden] (Qui si parla

Campagnolo) said:

Jon-<< Sad about Marco; but let me indulge my curmudgeonly side and ask what this has to do with
techical issues? >><BR><BR>

Thought I was a curmudgeon...'bout bikes, afterall...

rec.bicycles.misc, rec.bicycles.racing, rec.bicycles.soc...all 'bout bikes...and each a more
appropriate forum for discussing Pantani's death.

jeverett3<AT>earthlink<DOT>net home.earthlink.net~jeverett3Open ↗

Benjamin Weiner <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<4031df7b$1@darkstar>...

Quoted message said:

Carl Fogel said:

The logic behind those arguments may need more explanation.

Carl, please do not say "may need" when you mean "I want"; eschew the passive voice.

Quoted message said:

The number of pro cyclists may have increased (or decreased or remained the same) and may have
changed at a different rate than the population as a whole--but how does this affect their
predicted longevity?

It affects the distribution of observed ages of death, because you aren't measuring the longevity
of all the ones still alive. Here is a very simple example. Suppose I have a bunch of pathological
bunnies. 1/4 of these bunnies live 1 year and 3/4 of them live 5 years. Over a long period of time
(several times greater than 5 years) the average age of death of the bunny population approaches 4
years. Suppose I look at a biased-young cohort of bunnies born two years ago. All the ones that
died were 1 year old, much less than the average. Holy [censored], these bunnies are on dope! Well, not
really. This is the problem with the "average age of death = 53" apocryphal result cited earlier.
You can get around that by looking at the incidence of dying young in a subgroup versus the
general population, but again you have to control for the distribution of birthdates.

Quoted message said:

The majority of post-war Tour de France cyclists may still be alive, but then so are the
majority of the people in the population as a whole who were born in the same year as the
cyclists.

Quoted message said:

If pro cyclists born in 1956 are dying at a significantly different rate than my high school
class, then they're dying at a different rate.

Now you're controlling for the distribution of birthdates, which is the right thing to do, but
much more of a pain. People writing newspaper articles are unlikely to do this. Don't forget to
control for economic status, which is correlated with life expectancy - traditionally I believe
many European professionals have been from poor and working class backgrounds.

Quoted message said:

A proper study is certainly tricky and tedious, but but given roughly 100 to 200 pros riding in
the post-war Tour every year for the last fifty years, it hardly seems impossible.

Very well, Carl, I commission you to do it. I actually think even with that total sample number it
might be difficult to get a statistically meaningful result, since the early deaths are still a
small percentage of the total.

Dear Benjamin,

If two different groups with the same birth year have different death rates, they have different
death rates. You seem to be the only poster in this thread who was not controlling for birth rates
or other obvious matters.

If professional cyclists do die markedly younger on average than the general population, due to drug
use or other factors, studies would confirm this. Dodging this seems to be the point of your post.

Carl Fogel

"Jay Beattie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

"Carl Fogel" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Benjamin Weiner <[email hidden]> wrote in message

news:<40306a8f$1@darkstar>...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Carl Fogel <[email hidden]> wrote:
> Tim McNamara <[email hidden]> wrote in message

news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> > ISTR a reference that in the 1970's some worldwide health

study found

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> > that the life expectancy of pro cyclists was well below

average (like

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> > 53 years). I've never been able find the original data,

though.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> procycling.comnews main.aspOpen ↗

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> It might be hard to find because it was French. It sounds as if it was a study of post-war
> Tour de France riders.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> I'm curious whether such studies connect the wide-spread drug use in professional bicycling
> with shortened life-spans.

This topic is occasionally debated in rec.bicycles.racing.

Nobody has

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

ever given a reference to a trustworthy study that found that

ex-pro

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

cyclists have a short life expectancy, and there are several

reasons

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

why studies like the above are flawed. You can Google search

rbr for

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

"life expectancy" for details. Robert Chung has explained a

couple of

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

times why such studies would be quite hard to do right.

Here's

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

a pithy one:

://groups.google.com/groups?q=life+expectancy+winners+group:rec.bicycles.racing&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-
8&scoring=r&selm=3C57EAEC.1B5C47B1%40nospam.com&rnum=3

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

A couple of obvious examples: The number of pro cyclists has

increased

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

greatly over the 20th century (faster than the population as

a whole I

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

expect). The majority of post-war Tour de France cyclists

are still

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

alive. Therefore the sample of dead cyclists is biased

towards people

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

who died young. You can't just compare to the population as

a whole

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

without controlling for the difference in distributions of

birthdates.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

(See Chung's post on the difference between longitudinal and

cohort

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

studies.)

I believe that the reference remembered by Tim is either an

urban

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

legend or statistically flawed.

Dear Benjamin,

The logic behind those arguments may need more explanation.

The number of pro cyclists may have increased (or decreased or remained the same) and may have
changed at a different rate than the population as a whole--but how does this affect their
predicted longevity?

The majority of post-war Tour de France cyclists may still be alive, but then so are the
majority of the people in the population as a whole who were born in the same year as the
cyclists.

If pro cyclists born in 1956 are dying at a significantly different rate than my high school
class, then they're dying at a different rate.

A proper study is certainly tricky and tedious, but but given roughly 100 to 200 pros riding in
the post-war Tour every year for the last fifty years, it hardly seems impossible.

My spreadsheet shows an average of 151 riders starting the Tour each year from 1946 to 2003.
Obviously, many of the 8611 starters were duplicates, veterans riding the Tour again. But even
if we assume an absurdly high 10-Tour average, there would be 861 riders over 57 years.

Much of what I saw in those posts consisted of examples and counter-examples limited to Tour winners--
a group of only 30 riders over 57 years, too small to be significant because a single occurrence
may skew things wildly. (To cite the obvious example, testicular cancer does not strike 1 out of
30 men--the incidence is roughly 0.5% by the age of 75, 1 victim out of 200.)

Life insurance companies and pension funds do this sort of thing well enough to make money at
it. They have a fairly clear notion of the differences that you mention, so it would be
interesting if they've done a study. Unfortunately, professional bicyclists are a very small
group, so they may have been ignored as not being worth the trouble.

Incidentally, professional cyclists on the Tour probably do have a lower life-expectancy than
the population as a whole--simply because they're all men. Women are slightly more than half the
population and live 5-7 years longer, on average, in Europe and America.

What pathology are we talking about? The latest on Pantani is that he died of cerebral and
pulmonary edema of unknown etiology. AFIK, Cerebral and pulmonary edema occurring together are not
the sort of thing you see routinely in uninjured people living below the top of Mt. Everest --
although I have heard of marathon runners getting pulmonary and cerebral edema due to a lack of
sodium (hyponatremia). There may be a cycling related cause for Pantani's death, but I certainly
do no know what it is. Without looking at the pathology, there really is no way of saying whether
Pantani or any other pro cyclist died due to a cycling-related cause as opposed to something else.
The may just be an unlucky populaiton. -- Jay Beattie.

Dear Jay,

When a distinct population is "unlucky," there's an explanation. Here, we're wondering whether
professional cyclists are indeed "unlucky"--that is, do they really die younger than other groups?
No other group will be the same--women, for example, live markedly longer. Professional marathon
runners presumably have a different longevity and die of different causes. Ditto for rock stars and
classical musicians.

Are there studies? If so, what did they actually find? How accurate and plausible are their
findings? That is, how many cyclists were tracked? How likely is it that the coroner discovered the
cause of death? Was there an immediate increase in the death rate after some significant event, such
as the introduction of EPO? Or is there no increase at all according to the data?

There is no question, for example, that professional cyclists often exhibit a thickening of the
heart wall commonly known as athlete's heart. The thickening is considered benign up to some point.
Beyond that, it's considered a different matter and diagnosed as cardiac myopathy--a bad thing
indeed. But this is not considered drug-related.

As for cerebral and pulmonary edema, there are other causes, but the combination is common in acute
heart failure. There isn't time or fluid for gross general edema to build up overnight, the kind of
of fluid retention over months of chronic heart failure that the late Dr. Atkins suffered--that was
almost all water, not fat, building up because his heart was so feeble that he was eligible for
heart transplant consideration.

Carl Fogel

Sir, If "pick the nit" you must, you might do well to pick with a little more precision. <g>

"... arguments may need more explanation," is not passive voice. Passive voice would have been,
"More explanation would be needed...".

Cal

Benjamin Weiner said:

Carl Fogel said:

The logic behind those arguments may need more explanation.

Carl, please do not say "may need" when you mean "I want"; eschew the passive voice.

probably comma couldn't true a wheel. remember george bush supports tobacco its conveinient. jesus
told him to do it. and he can't true a wheel either.

Carl Fogel said:

There is no question, for example, that professional cyclists often exhibit a thickening of the
heart wall commonly known as athlete's heart. The thickening is considered benign up to some
point. Beyond that, it's considered a different matter and diagnosed as cardiac myopathy--a bad
thing indeed.

Do you have any references that show training ever induces pathological cardiomyopathy? Yes,
training thickens the left ventricle to some extent. But AFAIK, training can not induce the disease.
--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA terrymorse.combikeOpen ↗

"Carl Fogel" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Jay Beattie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

news:<[email hidden]>...

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

What pathology are we talking about? The latest on Pantani

is

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

that he died of cerebral and pulmonary edema of unknown

etiology.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

AFIK, Cerebral and pulmonary edema occurring together are not

the

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

sort of thing you see routinely in uninjured people living

below

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

the top of Mt. Everest -- although I have heard of marathon runners getting pulmonary and
cerebral edema due to a lack of sodium (hyponatremia). There may be a cycling related cause

for

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Pantani's death, but I certainly do no know what it is.

Without

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

looking at the pathology, there really is no way of saying whether Pantani or any other pro
cyclist died due to a cycling-related cause as opposed to something else. The may

just

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

be an unlucky populaiton. -- Jay Beattie.

Dear Jay,

When a distinct population is "unlucky," there's an explanation. Here, we're wondering whether
professional cyclists are indeed "unlucky"--that is, do they really die younger than other groups?
No other group will be the same--women, for example, live markedly longer. Professional marathon
runners presumably have a different longevity and die of different causes. Ditto for rock stars
and classical musicians.

Quoted message said:

Are there studies? If so, what did they actually find? How accurate and plausible are their
findings? That is, how many cyclists were tracked? How likely is it that the coroner discovered
the cause of death? Was there an immediate increase in the death rate after some significant
event, such as the introduction of EPO? Or is there no increase at all according to the data?

All that I am saying is that pro cyclists may die younger as a population, but that does not tell
you why. For example, pro cyclists are generally European and may come from populations prone to
blood disorders. Maybe the Ukraininas get thyroid cancer from Chernobyl. Lance had testicular
cancer. None of this has any link to cycling -- but it increase the early mortality rate of the pro
cyclist population. Unless you target a pathological condition associated with cycling (e.g. drug
use, death by riding off Alpine passes -- or by being hit by the Broom Wagon, or a guy dressed up
like a devil), you cannot say that dying young is caused by pro cycling anymore than you can say
that bond-trading caused the early death of all those bond traders on the top floor of the World
Trade Center.

Quoted message said:

There is no question, for example, that professional cyclists often exhibit a thickening of the
heart wall commonly known as athlete's heart. The thickening is considered benign up to some
point. Beyond that, it's considered a different matter and diagnosed as cardiac myopathy--a bad
thing indeed. But this is not considered drug-related.

As for cerebral and pulmonary edema, there are other causes, but the combination is common in
acute heart failure. There isn't time or fluid for gross general edema to build up overnight, the
kind of of fluid retention over months of chronic heart failure that the late Dr. Atkins suffered--
that was almost all water, not fat, building up because his heart was so feeble that he was
eligible for heart transplant consideration.

I suppose we will learn soon enough the lurid details of Pantani's death. Personally, I think it was
a hit ordered by the NSA. -- Jay Beattie.

Terry Morse said:

Carl Fogel said:

There is no question, for example, that professional cyclists often exhibit a thickening of the
heart wall commonly known as athlete's heart. The thickening is considered benign up to some
point. Beyond that, it's considered a different matter and diagnosed as cardiac myopathy--a bad
thing indeed.

Do you have any references that show training ever induces pathological cardiomyopathy? Yes,
training thickens the left ventricle to some extent. But AFAIK, training can not induce the
disease.

There have been a couple of famous athlete deaths attributed to this condition over the past several
years. Hmmm, one of them was a basketball player. As far as I recall, sports was not implicated as a
causal factor in the disease process.

Here's some information for those interested in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

4hcm.orghome.phpOpen ↗

Another cyclist dead recently, 32y.o., team Banesto (sp?). Anybody know about this?

Robin Hubert

Terry Morse <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Carl Fogel said:

There is no question, for example, that professional cyclists often exhibit a thickening of the
heart wall commonly known as athlete's heart. The thickening is considered benign up to some
point. Beyond that, it's considered a different matter and diagnosed as cardiac myopathy--a bad
thing indeed.

Do you have any references that show training ever induces pathological cardiomyopathy? Yes,
training thickens the left ventricle to some extent. But AFAIK, training can not induce the
disease.

Dear Terry,

I think that I wrote even more badly than usual and confused you--sorry.

My point was only that the benign thickening often found in the heart walls of endurance athletes
can be a physical effect of professional cycling.

Then I happily digressed into the related matter of diagnosing this. Unfortunately, the benign
thickening is hard to distinguish from the early stages of cardiac myopathy, which is not benign.

Like too many of my digressions, this one could have used a good deal more clarity and explanation.

Here's a link to an article that explains how the two situations can be confused on an
echocardiogram:

fac.org.aripellicc.htmOpen ↗

You're quite right, as far as I know, to question what looked like a confused claim that exercise
induces cardiac myopathy. Again, sorry about that. I appreciate how nicely you raised your eyebrows.

Carl Fogel

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Robin Hubert
Another cyclist dead recently, 32y.o., team Banesto (sp?). Anybody know about this?

Robin Hubert

Dear Robin,

Possibly you're thinking of Jose Maria Jimenez?

Suffering from depression, he died at 32 in December
2003 in a Spanish psychiatric hospital.

Some articles say heart attack, but usually add that
an autopsy was pending. Perhaps someone knows
if the autopsy results were ever published.

Newspapers are rarely good at distinguishing a
heart attack (blocked arteries) from heart failure.

In either case, it was (as usual) quite unusual.

In a November rec.bicycling.racing thread, the
astonishingly credulous posters debated in
apparent good faith absurd figures from a college
student's web site about 100,000 young U.S.
athletes suffering sudden cardiac death while or
just after exercising, including some 45,000
said to perish every year while playing basketball.

Here's the post in the thread:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=fqyub.7276%24Rk5.6509%40newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net&output=gplain

Here's the cited article:

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~excs597k/carpenter/sdathlete.htm

Elsewhere, the cited article did give the more
plausible figure of 0.75 such deaths per year
per 100,000 young male athletes.

The article also referred to a JAMA study that
consisted of only 158 such sudden deaths among
young male athletes--over eleven years. Ninety
per cent of these sudden deaths took place
while exercising or immediately afterward,
not after the young athletes went to bed.

Here's where Benjamin Weiner pointed out
how absurd the 100,000 per year figure was
and cited more believable data:

--

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3fbc9644%241%40darkstar&output=gplain

A real article on sudden cardiac death is at
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/wk/mm5106.pdf

Table 1: all cardiac deaths, US 1999, age 0-34 years: 7546
(1/3rd of these are 0-4 years old)
Table 2: sudden cardiac deaths, US 1999, age 0-34 years: 3976

Until proven otherwise, I wouldn't believe that
the 100,000 number is for young athletes worldwide,
either. It could be somebody's misinterpreted BS.

---

I must add that this just Benjamin's telling comment
demolishing an outrageously bad statistic that everyone
was taking as gospel, and that it should not be taken as
implying that he was taking any position about drugs
and cardiac deaths.

Cardiac problems are pretty much limited to the very
young (children with serious congenital problems)
and the older population (blocked arteries and
creeping problems). Teenagers and young men rarely
die of abrupt heart failure and even more rarely in their
sleep. Normally, roughly nine times as many people
the age of the cyclists in question would die sudden
cardiac deaths while exercising or immediately
afterward as would be found dead in their beds
the next morning.

Possibly someone will find an impressive list of
professional cyclists dropping dead of heart failure
during or just after races, but mostly they seem to
die in their sleep in an unusual fashion.

Carl Fogel

carlfogel said:

Robin Hubert said:

Another cyclist dead recently, 32y.o., team Banesto (sp?).

Anybody know > about this?

Quoted message said:

Robin Hubert

Dear Robin,

Possibly you're thinking of Jose Maria Jimenez?

Suffering from depression, he died at 32 in December 2003 in a Spanish psychiatric hospital.

Some articles say heart attack, but usually add that an autopsy was pending. Perhaps someone knows
if the autopsy results were ever published.

Newspapers are rarely good at distinguishing a heart attack (blocked arteries) from heart failure.

In either case, it was (as usual) quite unusual.

In a November rec.bicycling.racing thread, the astonishingly credulous posters debated in apparent
good faith absurd figures from a college student's web site about 100,000 young U.S. athletes
suffering sudden cardiac death while or just after exercising, including some 45,000 said to
perish every year while playing basketball.

Here's the post in the thread:

groups.google.comgroupsOpen ↗
news.atl.earthlink.net&output=gplain

Here's the cited article:

www-unix.oit.umass.edusdathlete.htmOpen ↗

Elsewhere, the cited article did give the more plausible figure of .75 such deaths per year per
100,000 young male athletes.

The article also referred to a JAMA study that consisted of only 158 such sudden deaths among
young male athletes--over eleven years. Ninety per cent of these sudden deaths took place while
exercising or immediately afterward, not after the young athletes went to bed.

Here's where Benjamin Weiner pointed out how absurd the 100,000 per year figure was and cited more
believable data:

--

groups.google.comgroupsOpen ↗ put=gplain

A real article on sudden cardiac death is at cdc.govmm5106.pdfOpen ↗

Table 1: all cardiac deaths, US 1999, age 0-34 years: 7546
(1/3rd of these are 0-4 years old) Table 2: sudden cardiac deaths, US 1999, age 0-34 years: 3976

Until proven otherwise, I wouldn't believe that the 100,000 number is for young athletes
worldwide, either. It could be somebody's misinterpreted BS.

---

I must add that this just Benjamin's telling comment demolishing an outrageously bad statistic
that everyone was taking as gospel, and that it should not be taken as implying that he was taking
any position about drugs and cardiac deaths.

Cardiac problems are pretty much limited to the very young (children with serious congenital
problems) and the older population (blocked arteries and creeping problems). Teenagers and young
men rarely die of abrupt heart failure and even more rarely in their sleep. Normally, roughly nine
times as many people the age of the cyclists in question would die sudden cardiac deaths while
exercising or immediately afterward as would be found dead in their beds the next morning.

Possibly someone will find an impressive list of professional cyclists dropping dead of heart
failure during or just after races, but mostly they seem to die in their sleep in an unusual
fashion.

Carl Fogel

It was a yes or no question, Carl 🙂

Bill "j/k...good stuff" S.

John Everett said:

(Qui si parla Campagnolo) said:

Jon-<< Sad about Marco; but let me indulge my curmudgeonly side and ask what this has to do with
techical issues? >><BR><BR>

Thought I was a curmudgeon...'bout bikes, afterall...

rec.bicycles.misc, rec.bicycles.racing, rec.bicycles.soc...all 'bout bikes...and each a more
appropriate forum for discussing Pantani's death.

jeverett3<AT>earthlink<DOT>net home.earthlink.net~jeverett3Open ↗

I was at the trattoria on the corner tonight and happened to see the RAI coverage of Pantani's
funeral. So sad to see his photo over the bier. (Rerun- it was 3AM in Italy)

--
Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org Open every day since 1 April, 1971

John Everett <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

rec.bicycles.misc, rec.bicycles.racing, rec.bicycles.soc...all 'bout bikes...and each a more
appropriate forum for discussing Pantani's death.

Yes, but in this newsgroup the quality of the information contained in the postings is far superior
(even with threads which are slightly off topic). rec.bicycles.racing on the other hand attracts
every nutcase and his wife - and the general tone of the newgroup is frequently abusive - "Dumbass".