‘Training at insane levels’: Inside the brutal, elite world of private school rowing

[lflanigan]

Not to bring the mood down, but this article appeared this morning about the sad death of of high schooler while training a few days ago.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/vict ... 5ldz7.html

Interested in the opinions of those who might have more experience in this world.

I can post the whole article if it's paywalled.

[Carl Watts]

Its very common to have heart related faults and not even know you have them. Plenty of people have collapsed on the sports field and lets get honest here, sports performance drug usage is rife these days, even at the high school level.

Its inevitable in the ultra competitive world of sport that some are going to die in the process.

Problems show up in an ECG, I have a mate that didn't even know he had an existing heart condition until he was about 60.

[JaapvanE]

Its very common to have heart related faults and not even know you have them. Plenty of people have collapsed on the sports field

I agree with this part. Even in professional sports like soccer, where people are medically checked before starting on a new contract, you see this happen. Hidden cardiovascular issues are hard to find, even if you look for them. I honestly don't know if rowers have an increased risk here.

[reevio]

Agree it's kinda buried way down in the article how the fatality was not a result of the training.

La Gerche said it was impossible to take a healthy person and train them to a point where they died suddenly. Rather, exercise could trigger an underlying problem.
La Gerche, who specialises in cardiac imaging, sports cardiology and cardiac arrest, stressed to parents that children were not at risk of dying when training or competing.

[Dangerscouse]

Its very common to have heart related faults and not even know you have them. Plenty of people have collapsed on the sports field

I agree with this part. Even in professional sports like soccer, where people are medically checked before starting on a new contract, you see this happen. Hidden cardiovascular issues are hard to find, even if you look for them. I honestly don't know if rowers have an increased risk here.

This seems to me to be that really important adage that I consistently think. Correlation isn't causation.

It makes good copy to write things like this, as the sensationalism of it sells, "if it bleeds, it leads" was the bedrock, and probably still is, of journalists for decades.

[aussie nick]

Its very common to have heart related faults and not even know you have them. Plenty of people have collapsed on the sports field and lets get honest here, sports performance drug usage is rife these days, even at the high school level.

Its inevitable in the ultra competitive world of sport that some are going to die in the process.

Problems show up in an ECG, I have a mate that didn't even know he had an existing heart condition until he was about 60.

yes. my best mate was a professional rugby player but only found out he had a condition (ventricular cardio myopathy) after we went one day to a hospital to make a few quid doing clinical trials and they discovered that he had an irregular heart beat. it had never shown up on any of his fitness or health tests with his rugby club

this eventually led to him retiring from full time sport at 27. And sadly it didn't prevent him dying, totally out of the blue one evening a few years later when he was under no stress at all.

Training hard and playing sport at an intense level can put extra stress on an already weak heart and might precipitate a tragic event. But it's extremely unlikely to be the root cause of it