I a shoked... the winner of the '98 Tour of France has been found dead. It shouldn´t be so shocking if a young 21 years (Johan Sermon) old cyclist weren´t been found dead last Thursday either...
One month ago a 32 years old cyclist died (Chaba Jiménez, a famous spanish climber) he was retired and had problems with drugs, but...
At the beginning of the year '03, Dennis Zanette, another cyclist, died at the dentist... And Fabrice Salanson, a young cyclist, also died while he was sleeping.
I can remember than two football players died recently too, Foé and Fehrer... I think that in this case is proved that they had some kind of congenit heart problem, but in any case, it reveals the quality of the health controls in the word of sports...
Coming back to cyclism... You can say that this is normal, that this is a hard sport and that things can happen... but we're talking of a community of aprox. 5,000 profissional cyclists in the world, 5 deaths per 1,000 in one year is too much for a supposed to be "healthy" people...
Maybe there is a new drug or something?
This is weird...
Yeah, a new drug... thats it...
/me hides his baseball bat... ;D
Better watch your back Lance Farstrong. You better watch your back...
Ho ho ho... you´re so funny... :P
It does seem strange that these healthy people are dying, but I don't know if it's a trend on the info you've provided.
eg. the one that died at the dentist, what was the cause, did the dentist slip and accidently drill throw his skull, did he have a reaction to a drug the dentist gave him, did he have a heart attack or something unrelated?
There could be a new drug out there or people that are ill informed about the drugs out there.
More sports are professional these days, which means there is more money and people involved. There are pleanty of elite athletes out there but there are also some that are just outside that elite level and take enhansing drugs. This may lead to more deaths.
Also with more people involved, there will be more deaths from natural things. eg. It doesn't matter how fit you are if you have a hereditary heart problem or cancer.
These things tend to happen, whether it is actually some weird thing, only time will tell (or it will get covered up by governing bodies) but it could all just be coincidence or the percentage is the same compared to the past.
I really don't know, just thought I'd put my thoughts down
I´ve read most of this during this time, and I´ve reached to another conclussion... Two of the cases (Chaba and Pantani) were caused by the substances that they´ve took for depression treatening. I can remember that Graham O´Bree, the big scottish time-trial specialist, was surprised trying to suicide by hanging of a tree and his life was saved just by seconds. In this cases we can talk that intense sport saved the lifes of this guys while they were compeating, let me explain myself:
Intense sport brings some good things for your body... You burn 4,000-6,000 Kcalories each days, you produce a lot of endorphines (sp?)...
For a people with hormonal dissorders which can cause depressions this activity allow them to have a normal life and this depressions can´t be detected.
When the sportive life ends, the hormones do their work and the roller coaster starts to go down. We must sum to this the overweight that comes to every sportman who stops making sport suddenly.
The last ingredient of this explosive recipe is that a heart used to work intensively becomes lazy.
We still have to explain the cases of Zanette (The guy on the dentist) and the young French and Belgium guy.
I am not very aware of Zanette´s case, but I think that the dentist was away (atending a phone call, I think...) and when he came back the poor guy died.
Same to the two other guys... Death comes in the day of rest of the cyclist, when they´re relaxed (Two of them were sleeping, and the Italian was just lying on a dentist´s armchair...)
The cyclists heart is usually big. I have a rate of 39 pulses per minute, and I am just a third division cyclist. When a heart that can reach 30 pulses per minute is relaxed, there is a dangerous situation, in fact, cyclists can´t compeate when their blood is too thick (When their hematocrite rate is more than 50%) they must stop compeating and training for avoiding embolia.
I thought that with this controls the danger passed away, but this three deads have been strange. I´ve heard something about synthetic hemoglobine, It seems it is fashioned and works. I hope it does not increase the danger of heart attack... this guys don´t deserve to put their life in danger for increasing the Tour speed average in 2 or 3 miles per hour.
The spectacle should be the same if NOBODY took drugs... maybe slower, but the fight should be the same.
Doping sucks... :P
I too blame it on poor medical control, at least in the football cases. Two players have suffered from heart attacks during matches in big tournaments, not some basements. Also, Pellegrino had a temporary memory loss in the match between Valencia and Malaga. These things shound not happen. FIFA should set new standards for pre-match medical examinations.
This is probably where money comes into it as usual. These players get payed more money than they'll ever need, but because they get this money they are forced to earn it. Even if they aren't fit, sometimes they'll play because they are basically told they have to. They play with injections sometimes (which I think must be performance enhancing since if they didn't have it they would be in agony and maybe not even able to walk)
It comes down to being the fans fault for making it popular, and the medias fault for getting fans interested. The players are just people like you and me that just happen to be good at something that is popular.
People die everyday, It's part of the life cycle, fuck it, if they die, life will go on elsewhere, you could be next...... yes you!!
It seems that Pantani was overweighted (his weight was 80, a lot of compared with the 57 he weighted when he winned the Tour...), and abandoned to his fate before dying. His friends now claim that they tried to help but he refused.
I perfectly understand this. I personally meet Pantani riding with my bike, and he was very unpolite. He has been the first of the profi bikers who has refused to greet me, more kindly or less, but he looked my friend and me with contempt.
One thing is to feel uncomfortable when amateurs who want to go with you if you´ve been a winner of the Tour, and another thing is to show disgust.
He was a strange person, with and without bike. I´m deeply sorry for him, but... All this has been to express the feeling that this Pantani´s case hasn´t been something related with dopping, IMO, in this sense, I feel a little bit better.