Gijs Verdick, who rides for the Netherlands-based Cyclingteam Jo Piels, is in a highly critical condition in hospital after sustaining a double heart attack while competing in a race in Poland.
In a press release issued on Tuesday evening, the UCI Continental team said that the 21-year-old had sustained the first heart attack at around 1am that morning.
He was resuscitated and taken to hospital, where he suffered a second cardiac arrest, and is said to have sustained brain damage as a result of oxygen deprivation.
His team did not start yesterday’s stage of the under-23 event he had been competing in, the Carpathian Couriers Race, and Piels’s family have travelled to Poland to be at his bedside.
The team has described his condition as “worrying and critical.”
The news comes a little more than a month after Belgian rider Daan Myngheer died two days after sustaining a heart attack at the Criterium International in France.
9 thoughts on “21-year-old Dutch pro Gijs Verdick sustains double heart attack”
Are cyclists going flat out
Are cyclists going flat out over prolonged periods somehow more susceptible to heart attacks? I wish him a speedy and hopefully complete recovery.
Boss Hogg wrote:
The heart develops small tears through inflammation when under strain for sustained periods. Think they’re saying now that endurance athletes are likely to have poor heart health, as opposed to the image of them having incredibly strong hearts.
Check this study on marathon runners. Doesn’t look good.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11676965
That said, these guys are young. The chances of a heart attack without first having some sort of defect I guess in incredibly odd. Usually there would be some cause like extreme heart, drugs, or other form of stress.
Boss Hogg wrote:
yeah its pretty scary and there isnt all that much data about it.
I rarely push myself hard for long period of time and I also let my heart ramp up instead of going right into max effort, though who knows how much difference it really makes.
Heart attack and cardiac
Heart attack and cardiac arrest are different things. Please clarify the article and/or respect this young man’s privacy.
Jharrison5 wrote:
Get a grip.
When I see stories like this
When I see stories like this my mind goes back to those young pros in the NL that died from EPO doping back in the nineties.
If doping was the cause in this case I doubt that we would ever know and understandably. My point is more that the hidden cost is those that get chewed up taking dangerous drugs, and also those that struggle to compete clean, but put their bodies on the line to do so. It’s easy to forget the hidden cost because often these people aren’t the most famous and successful sports people, and often it’s because they don’t have the same high level medical support that others have.
Colin Peyresourde wrote:
Yep. My thoughts too. The whole “Hematocrit” fudge emerged when it became clear that athletes were taking something, but it wasn’t known what, or how to detect it.
Now we hear horror stories of riders from that era sleeping with cardiac monitors rigged to wake them up in the night if their pulse rates dropped too low.
Is this an indication of something new emerging, or just tragic coincidental stories of a few cyclists having heart attacks?
If the former, then the drug testing authorities need to start taking action to ensure that the coroner’s offices are carrying out really probing inquests.
Jharrison5 wrote:
in simple terms, heart attack is a circulation problem whilst cardiac arrest is an electrical problem. Both unusual in fit young athletes.
heart attack more commonly associated in older people with blocked coronary arteries, e.g. as a by product of smoking. One suggested risk associated with EPO use is that it causes significant clotting, which can cause heart attack through blocking of the coronary arteries.
Hence, unfortunately in current climate people will be suspicious of any incident in a pro cyclist.
For what little it’s worth, my guess would be that this isn’t the case here. Anyone hospitalised due to a heart attack would get thrombolytics ( clot busters) which should prevent a second attack. Which suggests some sort of cardiac arrest in this case.
i guess that the press release in this case has been translated into English with important loss of meaning – two different terms used for whatever happened.
Best wishes to the rider.
The dutch articles I’ve found
The dutch articles I’ve found all use the term “heart attack”. Though, that’d be the common term for a major heart problem in dutch, as I thought it was in english. I wasn’t aware there was a significant technical difference in terms until reading the comments here.
Dutch press is further reporting that his brain went without oxygen for a significant period of time. His “pump function” is still significantly low (15%). There has been “no reaction from his brain” as yet – as per an article yesterday:
http://www.omroepgelderland.nl/nieuws/2109471/Toestand-wielrenner-Gijs-Verdick-nog-steeds-zorgwekkend