Race Officials Confirm That 2 Died After Marathon

DJKAV

Two of the 37,899 finishers of the New York City Marathon on Sunday died after crossing the finish line, according to the New York Road Runners, the organizer of the event. The Fire Department added that at least two others collapsed on the course with heart attacks before they were revived and taken to a hospital.
“For us at New York Road Runners, there is nothing harder than when two of our athletes don’t return home,” the race director, Mary Wittenberg, said Monday morning.
One of the runners was Carlos Jose Gomes, 58, of Brazil. He fell unconscious shortly after completing the race in 4 hours 12 minutes 15 seconds. A resident of São Paulo, Gomes was pronounced dead at Lenox Hill Hospital at 5:21 p.m. An autopsy Monday revealed that he had a pre-existing heart condition and died of a heart attack, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner’s office.
The Road Runners did not release details of the second fatality. But The Staten Island Advance reported that Joseph Marotta, 66, of Tompkinsville died, apparently of a heart attack, hours after finishing his fourth New York City Marathon. He walked the course in 9:16:46.
Dr. William J. Cole, a cardiologist who is a clinical assistant professor at New York University’s School of Medicine, said that in a field of close to 40,000 people, a handful of cardiac cases was “not unlikely.”
Sunday’s race had one of the largest fields in the marathon’s 39-year history, and Cole suggested that as the event continued to grow, the number of fatalities could swell.
“As these things get bigger, you get more and more people doing this who are not quite in shape enough, or maybe not as healthy as they should be,” he said. “So you’re going to potentially be seeing an increase in the number of things like this happening.”
Cole said that running the marathon with arteriosclerotic heart disease could have precipitated Gomes’s heart attack, which was probably “related to blockages in his arteries.”
“His heart muscle wasn’t getting enough blood with exercise and there may have been an arrhythmia,” Cole added. “There may have also been some electrolyte abnormalities at the same time.”
Last year, 28-year-old Ryan Shay collapsed and died in Central Park while competing in the United States Olympic marathon trials. The next day, Matthew P. Hardy, a 50-year-old research scientist, finished the marathon for the 12th time, then later died at his home in Manhattan as a result of a coronary artery blockage. (The Road Runners did not consider his a race fatality.)
The Road Runners said that the last marathon-related deaths were in 1994, when two men, ages 27 and 50, died of heart attacks.
The Fire Department reported that they revived two runners who had heart attacks Sunday. It said a 59-year-old man was treated by emergency medical services after collapsing on the Queensboro Bridge before 1 p.m. He was revived to a steady pulse with a defibrillator and rushed to Weill Cornell Medical Center.
A 41-year-old man also had a heart attack about 3 p.m. at 107th Street and Fifth Avenue. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital.
EARLY FINISH Nadine McNeil, 42, who had a stroke when she was 8 and lost the use of her right arm and right leg, competed in the handcycle division of the marathon and finished in an unofficial time of 3 hours 54 minutes 59 seconds. Her 18-year-old son, Tyler, who is autistic, made his marathon debut, running a time of 5:07:48.
But McNeil missed her son’s finish. She said she thought his time would be about six hours, so she was nervously waiting in a finishers’ tent at 72nd Street and Central Park West. As she was about to head back to the finish line, Tyler arrived with his guide.
“My friends said he had a smile on his face for all 26 miles,” McNeil said. “I couldn’t be prouder of him. I would have been proud of him if he had run 50 feet and stopped.” CHARLES WILSON
POSTRACE MEMORIES Kara Goucher’s 30-year-old body hurt as never before Sunday, a memento of her first marathon. She finished third, in 2:25:53, making her the third-fastest American woman, behind only the Olympic medalists Deena Kastor (2:19:36) and Joan Benoit Samuelson (2:21:21).
“I wasn’t able to get any liquids in after 10 miles,” Goucher said Monday. “I couldn’t keep anything down. I knew it would cost me, and three miles from the end it was very hard.”
She added: “This has been the greatest athletic experience of my life. I had a great time. I’ll be back. I love running the 5 and 10K, but I think I look better running the marathon. Mentally, I like it.”
What hurt the most? “Watching the race highlights and wishing I was Paula,” she said, referring to Paula Radcliffe, the 34-year-old from England who won in 2:23:56. FRANK LITSKY

nows thats pain ...

robinph

Whilst it's terrible that those people died during/ shortly after the marathon if you were to take any random group of 40,000 people then a couple of them would die from something or other every couple of days. It's stranger that nobody else had died during that marathon since '94 actually.

gerard65

The media love highlighting when deaths accur in big marathons. The fact is the death rate is no different than in the general population. I've heard it said that 'we're athletes trapped in a human body' and this is true, No matter how well we live our lives we can't change our genes. I read a while ago about a very fit young tri athlete who began to have pains in his chest. He saw a doctor, was sent for all the tests and was passed fit. A couple of weeks later he had a massive heart attack and died - 90% blockage in the aorta. There is only one medical procedure which gives the full picture of whats happening in your heart. It involves injecting a dye into the four chambers of the heart and watching it as it passes through the arteries. Its very expensive and very few doctors are willing to perform it as it has dangers in itself. (Noakes goes into detail about this in his book).
I suppose the moral is theres no point worrying about these things, somethings going to get you in the end, and what better way to go than doing something you love.;)

DJKAV

yet we don`t hear about any deaths at soccer matches all over england each week and the amount of people there in any ground could be up to 65.ooo.... amazing ..