Sunday, November 4, 2007

Olympic Marathon trials

Yesterday, November 3rd, the USATF held trials in New York City's Central Park to determine who would represent the US Olympic Team for the marathon in 2008. Unfortunately, a 28 year old runner, Ryan Shay (click here for latest news) collapsed 5 miles into the event and died.

This is obviously a huge tragedy on a day that should have been filled with joy and excitement. An autopsy is being conducted today (Sunday November 4th) to determine the cause of death--most likely an undiagnosed heart problem.

Shay was a 2002 Notre Dame grad, and his wife was a collegiate distance runner for Stanford.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his wife and the family, and I hope you all would send some good thoughts and prayers their way also.

More later...

2 Comments:

Daniel said...

So young and so apparently healthy to have collapsed. Very sad. Given my mountain biking, I am always gone for a few hours on 20-30 mile jaunts up in the mountains, and even though I'm in what I consider pretty good shape, I do think about what would happen if something happened to me up there. Best thoughts to his family. It's an upsetting and confusing loss.

snowelf said...

This is such a sad thing---and for it to have happened in front of so many people is so awful. I definitely feel so bad for his family no matter what the cause of his death. (I haven't checked on the latest news yet)

And like Rubink said, I know all of us exercise on our own a lot of the time, how equally scary would it be to have that have happened when he was alone. It's just too bad that they couldn't help him--even with paramedics right there.

--snow