Sporting Life

In a run full of life, death makes a terrible visit

ST PHOTO: CHEW SENG KIM
ST PHOTO: CHEW SENG KIM

Nothing made sense on a terrible Sunday as a young man lay on the asphalt. Stilled amid a sea of runners. Running gives life and so it bewilders us when it takes it. John Gibson was only 29, his future lay before him, and then he was gone. His heart may have possibly failed, his family's surely is broken.

You probably didn't know John Gibson from Hong Kong, who competed in triathlons, yet it's possible you were not complete strangers. He belonged, perhaps like you, to that tribe that transcends age, expertise and national border. It is a sweating society annoyed by alarm clocks, which pulls on sneakers and wears challenge. In the dawn or by the evening streetlight, this clan thinks of kilometres, of cadence, of timing. Never of death. How can they, for they have come to the road to fulfil life.

And yet death and sport are grim old associates, the first always lurking like a bully at the edges of the second. We know death happens and yet somehow it is always a surprise, mostly because it claims the young before they have wandered the world. Often we comfort ourselves by saying that if you race in machines at otherworldly speeds, and collide brutally in boxing rings, and confront nature on the mountains, sometimes the equation will go wrong. Risk will be miscalculated.

But running never seems risky to us but instead liberating. Running brings vitality, it infuses us with health, it is supposed to increase our years not shorten them. Running is not dangerous, but we cannot forget that it is difficult. The thrill lies in pushing our bodies but we have to know our bodies and how much to push. Running tests the heart in every way, literal and figurative, and there are some things our hearts are not meant to take.

In a paper titled Mortality Among Marathon Runners in the United States, 2000-2009, it is stated that "of 3,718,336 total marathon participants over the 10-year study period, we identified 28 people (six women and 22 men) who died during the marathon race and up to 24 hours after finishing". Of these, 24 deaths were linked to the heart.

In another 2007 paper titled Marathon Cardiac Deaths: The London Experience, Dan S. Tunstall Pedoe, the London Marathon medical director from 1981 to 2006, stated that only one runner of the eight who had died "had reported symptoms to his family or physician suggestive of cardiac disease".

We do not know what felled John Gibson in the half-marathon and nor should we guess, but certainly we must pause and mourn a young man and reflect on the safe pursuit of our athletic selves. Finding the best runner inside us is a joy and yet never a lark. As Ashley Liew, an elite Singapore marathoner, says: "It's a very tough event and so you need to appreciate the distance and not take it lightly."

We need to train our bodies and listen to their machinery with sensitive ears. We must know which knee pain you can run with and that over-hydrating can be life-threatening. We must train using specific programmes and not canter up hills only because a friend mentioned it's a good idea. As Ben Tan, marathoner and chief of sports medicine at Changi General Hospital, says: "The health benefits come from the preparation and not from the race."

We must also discover our balance and restrain our heroism. If we're recovering from a flu, take it easy; if we're feeling exhausted, perhaps slow down; if we cannot finish, it is no failure. Not every challenge must be run down on that day.

No one is finger-pointing at organisers but they must, in a city replete with runs, gather and reassess how they run races. They must weigh again the number of water stops, the defibrillators handy, the route of ambulances and whether they're making every runner fill in the Par-Q (physical activity readiness questionnaire). This is a business and yet a human responsibility to thousands in sneakers.

Of course, life comes with no guarantee for you can train and yet the heat might surprise you. You can screen yourself medically and yet not pick up an abnormality of the heart. You can have an ambulance handy and yet it is too late. There is no certitude on the crowded road that misfortune will not look just for you.

We tend in an over-worshipping world to loudly mourn the death of the famous, yet there is something ineffably sad to the passing of this unknown visitor. Because on Sunday there he was, running, sweating, just beside you, just like you, just another dream alive in a crowd. In a photograph of him, which his father sent to my colleague, I am struck by his face. It is so very gentle. And so impossibly young. So many roads it seemed lay before him and yet now no more to be run.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 06, 2016, with the headline In a run full of life, death makes a terrible visit. Subscribe