I know we were all racing but did the guy actually die? My girlfriend's wave was delayed as they brought his purple blue body out of the water...she said he didn't look good, they were doing CPR on the steps.
Sad deal. I hope he was able to be saved

I am going by hearsay.. so no official news reports I have seen

Anyone have a update on this? I haven't been able to find anything on it.

Here is the obituary notice: https://www.legacy.com/...ch&pid=193967936

Age 72 - I'm 67 myself and did the race last year -2nd in the 65-70. I had a congenital heart valve replaced 6 months before that. Just had my postop treadmills. Most treadmills are stopped at 80% of predicted heart rate because they are designed to detect coronary artery disease. I told the tech to go until I told them to stop and reached 107% of the predicted max. Without that effort, unknown what the heart will do in a race. I now take it easy in the swim - I used to come out in the top 20% - last race I did a lot of breast stroking when I was short of breath and even rested on the lifeguard's board for a moment - not worth it.

Gil Solomon, MD, MPH

Thanks for posting.

I searched a few different times and couldn’t come up with any results.

Very sad.

Kind of ironic that he was a heart doc, he probably knew of the studies, or even read about them here on the multitude of threads we have had over the years..RIP doc..

And as to your treadmill test, you can see how archaic the industry is, still using 220 minus your age as your target HR max. OF course no one goes 107% over their max, I wonder if they get that? And this is the industry that is supposed to tell us if we have an underlying condition? Thankfully there are some docs out there that specialize in athletes, study them, and keep up to date on the latest findings..So one more older age group white guy to keep padding that category, ugh...

This is very sad. Here’s another guy just like many of us whose retirement plan had a heavy dose of healthy activities to make the best of his later years. I don’t care what many people think about the reasons, healthy people should not be dying after probably less than 30 minutes into the swim. I’m going to keep reiterating my request that USAT follow up on these deaths, their last effort was a good start, but this issue is far from settled by the suggestion of a swim warmup.

shorter races, of what this was, are more intense and raise heart rate more. training for long distance races you will have lower HR.. but sacrifice intensity

I don’t disagree at all, but how do we know it’s high heart rate that is inducing these cardiac events. I know many seniors doing intense speed workouts on the track with no events. I wouldn’t mind seeing some controlled studies of the initial HR of open water swimmers going all out to see if it’s true. Even if it did occur there would need to be other issues to have the high HR correlate to a cardiac event. Some will point to underlying heart issues but even with the most generous data interpretations at least 50% of the cases the cardiac event was the first indication of any problem.

I've been in two sprint races where the swim was about 500 yards, where a guy died in each, less than half way through. One a wetsuit swim, the other non. When it comes to trying to drill down about water temps, roughness, wetsuit or not, it just doesnt seem to matter much. The only common denominator is that it was in the swim, and usually middle aged men.

Dan and I were talking on the way to swimming today about the first 10 years of triathlon, and neither of us could recall a death in the swim, ever. That first half was no wetsuits, down to 50 degree water too. The 2nd half had wetsuits, and neither of us could ever remember a swim being cancelled or shortened either. Hell, there was at least 3 races I did where it was the only day of the year you could swim in that body of water, because it was so polluted and no swimming was allowed otherwise. Maybe because most triathlons were at the beach in the old days, and we just got a more capable and less anxiety laden athlete to do those early races, I really dont know. Maybe it was just a numbers thing, and it eventually had to catch up sometime...)-;

Since the death rate rises to six fold for over age 50 and 10 fold over age 60, perhaps a separate waiver for male athletes (me included) that outlines the increased risk, the possible tests to check for increased risk (coronary artery calcium for Coronary Artery Disease along with a treadmill to maximum tolerated); the advisability of taking it easy in the swim, since studies show that going out at 80% in the swim results in overall improved time for all three disciplines, and maybe a video to listen to reviewing all of the data and suggestions for older triathletes in the swim. Having said that, it is unlikely that USAT would consider this.

I rather see certification you can complete the swim distance non stop.


Perhaps we need to look deeper into the athlete's history for these cases. The heart does operate differently on a swim than the run. Could it be the group start? Could it be over reaching trying to catch someone way more fit to draft off of?

I have been talking with daughter of the man that passed away. She is desperately trying to find out any information she can. If you can share anything please me know or if you would feel better talking directly with her, I can give you her number.

What was result of her speaking to hospital / emergency personnel? Seems he was out doing this alone? I smell litigation coming... Unfortunately I have no more to share than what was said here

Today the race director posted about it finally: