I witnessed the man being treated as I exited the water. My wife and young kids saw him being pulled out. I had to lie to them and tell them that he went to the hospital and is fine. They still believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, so I don’t think they need the full truth on what they saw. Not today.
While we all know that cardiac arrest can happen any time, and this man was not a first-timer, and he was found at the end of the swim, past the biggest danger (getting past buoy one was very hard), it still focuses attention on the available personnel. I myself felt like there was plenty, but I am reading that previous years had many more guards, with jetskis. We had 17 on boards. I am too new to know if that number is sufficient. This is not a new race. It is large and sells out. The water was very rough, and many people dropped out before the first buoy. Some comments claim that guards pulled in many people. Every single person I asked about their swim said the exact same thing “that swim f#$%ing sucked.”
Thoughts and prayers for the family and friends of Steve Linthicum today.
I have a very serious comment about this, hopefully it gets a response.
We are all quick to absolve ourselves in saying this guy died of cardiac arrest and it could have happened anywhere. But this leads to a question.
How would a physician be able to tell the difference between an “unprovoked” cardiac arrest while swimming and a cardiac arrest that was caused by drowning while the swimmer had an intact laryngospasm and closed airway?
In either of those cases it seems there would be very little fluid in the person’s lungs and telling one from the other would be difficult.
But perhaps there are some telling signs that I don’t know about.
Initial rhythm is a cue. If he was in v-fib the cause is much more likely cardiac. PEA (pulseless electrical activity where you see a rhythm on the monitor but there is no associated heart motion/pulse) arrest is more suggestive of non-cardiac arrest (PE, respiratory arrest, etc). But it’s not totally cut and dry.
(My neighbor is the RD’s sister-in-law; she just completed her first triathlon a couple of weeks ago (I helped her figure out her bike shifting))
I did a reverse triathlon (run/bike/swim) the same day in NJ. While the swim was short (1/4 mile or so), it was very difficult. Between the swells and the strong current, I found it hard to find, get out to, and get around the first turn buoy (and I was 4th overall in the water). It took me a while to find the second (and final) buoy, and then I used a building in the background to sight on since I couldn’t find the damned thing again. Also caught several waves coming in.
The conditions were difficult, but not dangerous to a competent swimmer.
My heart goes out to the racer’s family, the other participants, and all those who put on the event.
On behalf of the family of Steven Linthicum I was asked to help clarify the situation surrounding his death during the Dewey Beach Triathlon. The interest and compassion displayed by the so many concerned individuals is appreciated and deserves that the facts be presented accurately. Steven Linthicum was found unconscious at the second buoy. He was brought to the beach where he was attended to by a spectator who was a military EMT – many thanks to this wonderful lady. Once paramedics arrived on the scene they took over and he was transported to the hospital and put on life support. Steven Linthicum was taken off life support on Sunday August 18th. The autopsy report has not been released at this time but it is known he did not die from drowning.
Steven was an accomplished athlete in several sports. He had completed this event the prior year and in addition to his normal fitness routine, he had started training for this event well in advance and was well conditioned and prepared to compete. What happened at the buoy is not clear and may never be know. As speculated by some, there was no known pre-existing condition that anyone was aware of prior to his death.
I hope this helps people to better understand what occurred and helps clarify the speculation. Steven was 46 years old and leaves behind a wife and two sons.
So if inhaling some water induces laryngospasm (and apparently it doesn’t take much) then you get to cardiac arrest due to drowning. Seems a tough call to make.
The cardiac arrest hypothesis is just odd. The immense majority of deaths in triathlons are reported during the swim, not in running or cycling.
Temperature difference can trigger tachycardia after a while (I think this was the ruling with Fran Crippen at the 10km open water swim a few
months ago). But that’s hardly enough to explain while all the ‘heart issues’ seem to manifest themselves during the swim.
Despite the statistics since 2003, I’m not convinced you shouldn’t rule out panic. Two years ago at the Chicago Triathlon I had a pretty unsettling start in the Elite AG wave. I very seriously considered quitting as I was in a moderate state of panic. I got it together, but I can definitely see how it could have become worse and potentially dangerous.
“…But that’s hardly enough to explain while all the ‘heart issues’ seem to manifest themselves during the swim…”
Perhaps something else worth looking into. We know that most tri deaths short of bike crashes seem to happen in the swim and usually the autopsy claims some form of heart attack or heart failure.
If we take run, XC skiing or cycling races do all the heart attacks happen closer to the start, or later in the race? I think in these sports the deaths due to heart issues happen later not earlier in the race, but I don’t have all the stats.
My personal feeling is that dynamics during the swim do come into play. I’m not really sure that having easy access to life saving gear really eliminates everything…maybe RD’s need everyone to swim around 300m before a race even starts (mandatory swim to start buoy) and then start, but with small waves where the lifeguard to athlete ratio is manageable (or at least an athlete in distress can quickly hang off a surf board). Not saying that this was the case at this race (lack of life saving), I’m just referring to the general case, especially mass start Ironmans, with no warmup and going from zero to 100% with people crawling over each other’s backs.
Lane swim at your public poolMasters swim practiceMasters swim meetWell, perhaps people do, but we don’t hear about it…however with the presence of ST posters in probably every major city in the world, we’d have more of “buddy died at masters swim today” with the same frequency that we’d have “athlete dies at xyz tri today”.
My personal feeling is that dynamics during the swim do come into play. I’m not really sure that having easy access to life saving gear really eliminates everything…maybe RD’s need everyone to swim around 300m before a race even starts (mandatory swim to start buoy) and then start, but with small waves where the lifeguard to athlete ratio is manageable (or at least an athlete in distress can quickly hang off a surf board). Not saying that this was the case at this race (lack of life saving), I’m just referring to the general case, especially mass start Ironmans, with no warmup and going from zero to 100% with people crawling over each other’s backs.
I think that is an excellent point…with a mass start swim, there are any number of different elements that are not there during training or even OWS, and many people start out faster than they anticipated and without a proper warm-up. HR skyrockets, anxiety over the mass scrum, cold water, wetsuit restriction, et al could just all combine into a lethal combination of elements.