Jo-Ann Farmer, the coroner who did the autopsy, said the cause of death was drowning complicated by “hypertensive cardiovascular disease.” She said Wezka’s heart was mildly enlarged.
Two cases in Vermont
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Christopher Ludington, 57, of Morrisville, Vt., regularly rode eight miles over hills to his job. On Memorial Day weekend, he ran a half-marathon in Burlington. On June 16, he drowned in a lake during a triathlon near Stowe.
It was his fourth triathlon but only the second one in open water. His 25-year-old son was in the same race and later said that for most of the course the water was shallow enough to stand up in.
Ludington’s widow, Susan, blames his death partly on a wet suit he’d just gotten.
“He was terribly claustrophobic. . . . It was really tight. My hypothesis is that he was swimming and it was so tight that his chest couldn’t expand, and he panicked.” She added that “the swim was the part he was most anxious about.”
Vermont’s medical examiner ruled the death a “drowning in setting of presumed cardiac event.” At autopsy Ludington had “dilated cardiomyopathy,” an enlargement of the heart that can increase the risk of sudden death. It also found “atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease,” which is found in 85 percent of people over 50.
A second Vermont man, 42-year-old Stephen J. J. Mount, drowned two weeks later in a different triathlon. A mild thickening of the heart muscle wall — the most common finding in athlete deaths — was seen at his autopsy.
‘Naturally anxious’
David A. Aschauer, a 58-year-old professor of economics at Bates College in Maine, died on Aug. 22, a day after being pulled unconscious from the ocean off Cape Elizabeth, near Portland, in a triathlon.
“He was a very healthy man. His father lived to 96. I don’t think he just went out there and had a heart attack. He ran and biked. But this was his first triathlon, and I’m sure he had no idea what it was like,” said his former wife, Sarah Aschauer.
Although he had done numerous sessions in open water, “I’m sure he was definitely nervous about the swim that day,” said his daughter, Erika Rodrigue, who was doing a triathlon in New Hampshire the same day. “He had a naturally anxious personality.”
She said he thought that if he didn’t finish in the top one-third of his age group he would be embarrassed.
“He was very driven. He could have been pushing himself past his own point of comfort.” The death, tentatively ruled a drowning, is still under investigation.
Another man, Steven J. Linthicum, 46, of Westminster, Md., died on Sept. 18, a day after he was pulled from the water at the Dewey Beach Sprint Triathlon in Delaware. His death is also still under investigation, and his wife did not want to talk.
Addressing the issues
“I think almost every triathlete that’s being honest has had these feelings. It just depends on the person whether you call it panic or not,” said Jack Caress, a 57-year-old race organizer who is president of Triathlon America, the industry’s trade organization.
He added: “I think these issues need to be much more honestly addressed. Sadly, because of what’s happened this year, it’s brought it more to the forefront.”
Successfully addressing the problem may be difficult. The New York City Triathlon, which has had the most deaths, has been trying to help participants cope with anxiety for a while.
About eight years ago, the race organizer, John Korff, wondered why at least 40 people a year got to the starting line but never started.
“I called them and by talking to a bunch I pieced together what was happening,” Korff recalled recently. “These people were in a state of distress, anxiety, some kind of panickiness. But most people — even New Yorkers who are free to say what their shrinks cost — don’t want to say, ‘Hey, I had a panic attack.’ ”
The race now mentions panic attacks and advises how to cope with them in a pre-race meeting required of all competitors. There is a drop-in “Psych Tent” on the route to the swim start. A team of psychologists roams among the waiting competitors, and another psychologist is stationed on the dock from which people start.
“You could sort of see it in their faces or their body language,” said Stacy Rosenfeld, a clinical psychologist and triathlete who ran the program from 2007 through 2010. “They were often standing off to the side. You’d just see that empty stare. Or they would come up and ask an anxious procedural question.”
The strategy was to help them understand that they were well trained and that they could do things (such as swim at the edge of the pack near the rescue boats or float on their back) if they panicked. They were allowed to start when they felt ready, even if that meant missing their assigned group.
“We never say, ‘Hey, man up, you can do this,’” Rosenfeld said. “If in the end they aren’t comfortable, we respect that.”
The number of no-starts is now fewer than 10 out of 5,600 competitors.
Perhaps only New York could be expected to provide real-time cognitive behavioral therapy by a roving band of shrinks. Nevertheless, the whole sport can probably do a better job of trying to prevent these rare and tragic deaths.
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