Death of young top-sporters on the increase - coincidence, mediahype or drugrelated ?

[Rik Meleet]

As an offspring of the "Di Tommaso" thread.

Di Tommaso Thread

 

[Rik Meleet]

(..)According to medical doctors, some people suffer from a heart problem that ultimately should mean that they cannot be professional athletes. Unfortunately, it is very hard to detect on a person that is aparently healthy, and sometimes they only notice it in the autopsy... There's of course, the chance that performance enhancing drugs are involved...

I recall many cyclists dying of heart attacks recently. And also cyclists who have ended their careers seem to suffer from heart-failure quiet often.
EPO is a heart-affecting drug and EPO is widely used (disclaimer: not-proven) in the peleton. That leads me to believe it is used in the other sports where athletes die of heart related causes. But I'd like to know: Does EPO increase the performance in football, or the 100 meter sprint (track and field) or rugby or only for duration-sports like the marathon and cycling ?

 

[thetrooper]

Could it be just a consequence of the information age? Maybe this was just as common earlier, but we never heard about it then (only in local news).

 

[nerovats]

Might be, but I think it´s increasing because sports in becomming a buisness. It´s more important to score, thus people will use stuf to help. Not only stuf that´s prohibitet, but also stuf which is not. I remember several American top-atletes found positive of a drug which was just included in the drug list. There will probably a lot of other drug which inhance strength/indurance but are not on the list, and thus used a lot.

 

[Stapel]

I heared a doctor on the radio say 80-90% have a (slightly) disfunctional heart, at birth.

As an offspring of the "Di Tomasso" thread.

Di Tommaso, not Di Tomasso.

SORRY Bas...

 

[willemvanoranje]

I think it unlikely that it is a result of the information age.. we had an information age in the 70'ies and 80'ies as well..

 

[thetrooper]

Just a thought to get this going.

 

[Serutan]

But I'd like to know: Does EPO increase the performance in football, or the 100 meter sprint (track and field) or rugby or only for duration-sports like the marathon and cycling ?

Well, I think it would work for any sport requiring a
lot of endurance; eg European Rules football, cycling,
water polo, long distance running, etc. It probably isn't
as effective for sports requiring less endurance/more
strength; eg American Rules football, sprinting,
baseball. Those sports tend more to steroids, which
have all sorts of fun side effects like heart problems,
and various cancers.

 

[willemvanoranje]

the bad thing is we can't prove it's drug related.. nonetheless I think steroids might be behind this, as well as some natural heart failures maybe..

 

[MCdread]

I think it unlikely that it is a result of the information age.. we had an information age in the 70'ies and 80'ies as well..

But were you here in the 70s or 80s to check? It's highly probable that in the socialist regimes of eastern Europe more athletes died or had problems, due to the heavy state sponsored doping programs.
Nowadays, the media reports what is on a high. For example, after the doping scandals in the Tour 1998 and Giro 1999, every cyclist that dies in mysterious circumstances is widely reported. But young cyclers were dieing before.
In football, the deaths of Foé and Feher during televised matches, watched by big audiences caused quite a shock, but players died in similar circumstances before, only far away from the TV cameras when the reality shows weren't yet fashionable.
I don't think there is an increase to answer the question in the thread title, but we hear about it more nowadays. For example, if I hadn't seen this thread here at CFC, I probably would never notice that there was a player called Di Tommaso, and that he died during his sleep at the age of 26. And I bet that none of you ever heard about the similar death of Pavão, the star of FC Porto in 1973, even if you were alive back then, because probably it only got a brief newspaper reference outside Portugal back then. Otoh, Lázaro, another portuguese athlete, died in the Marathon of the 1912 Olympics. Because he died in such a privileged stage, and was the first olympic athlete to die during the event, he became world famous, but if he had collapsed in a minor portuguese race, no one would have ever heard of him.

To conclude, to know about what happens in the world, someone has to report it to you. Nowadays, you can know about it from newspapers, radio, more TV channels than ever, and all the possible ways to find information on the internet, and there are more people, professionals or not, reporting whatever happens in every corner of the world.

 

[willemvanoranje]

hmmm.. so we are at the limit of our physical capabilities (that is humans in general )