Deaths

Virenque

News about Knetemann`s death on Wednesday, who died at 53 while he was fixing his chain, reminds me about all other equal (hearth attack) deaths of retired and active riders in last year or two! First in 2003 was Denis Zanette (active), who died at the dentist! Second was Rusconi, 24 year old amateur, who will turn pro next year (I`m nut sure about that)! Then Fabrice Salanson, young french rider, who was found dead in his room before the start of 2003 Tour of Germany (link)! There are already 4 riders and I remember another two: one retired and one young amateur, but I can`t find them in www.cyclingnews.com archive! So there are 6 riders in less than two years if we exclude Pantani, who died because drugs and JM Jimenez (I still don`t know if his heart stopped because drugs or without them).

I think that`s terrible and I don`t know why nobody is talking and thinking about these deaths, why there were so much deaths in so short time. I don`t know any other sport with that number of natural deaths! Even nobody have mentioned previous deaths when new one happened!

I think the reasons are too much efforts, possible because stimulants and doping help, which tire the hearth and then it suddenly stops! What do you think about that?

Dimos

Come on! He was 53. Quite the half of male Europeans of this age have health problems with their cardiovascular system.

It's very different from a dead teen active cyclist, or something as Salanson's case.

Virenque

OK he was 53, but it`s still pretty unusual to die at that age! But leave him, there were 4 other active riders, all except Zanette (33!) were younger than 30!

limerickman

The instances of premature death in our sport are far, far to high to be simply co-incidental.

patch70

I am not trying to deny the involvement of doping in some of these deaths but extreme endurance events like the grand tours can cause some cardiac damage on their own. If you do echocardiographs as soon as the event is over, you can find some very scarey looking results. Effectively non-functioning right ventricles are seen not uncommonly, especially after an athlete has had a bad day but tried to push through it. This sort of damage will surely lead to some minor scarring in the heart muscle which may become a focus for later arrythmias such as ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation. The latter is a frequent cause of sudden cardiac deaths.

Virenque

I will be very happy if you`ll write that list with dates here! I always want it but I couldn`t find some of the riders!

Rusconi was 24! Check it here.

And one question: where did you hear that cyclists are uninsurable? Please write a link if you know where it is writen!

Virenque

Thanks a lot!

I remember one event when Pantani died: we were skiing in Italy when Pantani died. My family and our company were all shocked and concerned when I told them for Pantani`s and previous deaths in last season. In the next day`s evening I went to the village to check the news on internet for details and I saw that another cyclist died (Sermon)! You can just imagine the scene when I told them that! Specially my mum was very concerned about the sport I train hehe..