One step away from death: athletes who survived serious illnesses and returned to sports
Kyiv • UNN
Stories of famous athletes who have survived heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and other deadly diseases. Some of them were able to return to professional sports and continue their successful careers.
It's probably no secret that modern professional sports have nothing to do with well-being and maintaining excellent health. Of course, we're talking about advanced sports like football, basketball, hockey, and especially martial arts: boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and MMA. Training before going on the field or in the ring is extremely difficult, and it is easy to get injured. Fractured limbs, head cuts, and even broken ribs are just a few of the things that happen to professionals in their training camps.
As for the competitions themselves, they are even more difficult. Sometimes they end not only with injuries for athletes, but also with disability and death. And we haven't even mentioned the exhausting diets and the use of doping (although almost all athletes deny taking steroids). So, a person has to live in such a regimen for several years, and even decades, so strokes, heart attacks, cancers, and sudden cardiac arrests are not isolated cases in the world of sports.
The editorial board of UNN decided to collect stories of athletes who were "one step away from death" but survived, and some of them returned to big sports.
Christian Eriksen
Sport: football
Country: Denmark
Age: 33 years old
Heart attack
The story of Christian Eriksen is a story about "going to the other side", resurrecting and returning to the big stage, and being even better than before, and this is no exaggeration.
June 21, 2021, became a "judgment day" for the then 29-year-old midfielder. As a member of the Danish national team at the European Football Championship against the Czech Republic, Christian Eriksen fainted during the game in the first half. Doctors tried to revive him for 9 minutes. But artificial respiration and closed heart massage did not help. The footballer regained consciousness, but could not breathe or move. So, Christian was taken off the field on a stretcher and taken to the hospital. There, they diagnosed a heart attack and began to resuscitate the player. Later it became known that Eriksen's condition had stabilized. When the athlete began his recovery program, he was fitted with a pacemaker. Later, Christian shared how he felt at that moment.
I left this world for five minutes, and then my heart started again. I remember everything except those five minutes - the throw-in, the ball hitting my knee... And then I don't remember what happened. Then I came to, there were people around me, and I felt pressure on my chest. I tried to regain my breath. When I opened my eyes, I didn't really understand what was happening. At that moment, I had no idea what had happened to me. My first thoughts were: did something happen to my legs? Did I break my back? Can I lift my leg? I tried to make micro-movements to understand what exactly happened to me
Almost no one believed that the Dane would return to big-time football. The Italian Inter Milan, where Eriksen played before the fatal accident, understandably terminated the contract with the midfielder, fearing that he might not survive on the field. But Christian returned.
On December 2, 2021, Eriksen began training with Odense's youth team. However, no club wanted to sign the player, except for the English club Brentford. On February 22, 2022, Christian played his first official match after a break and returned to the Danish national team in March.
From there, Eriksen's career only gained momentum. He started playing for the world's biggest football team, Manchester United, where he is still a member. Now the player feels, as he says, at his best and is not going to hang up his boots on a nail.
Iker Casillas
Sport: football
Country: Spain
Age: 43 years old
Heart attack
The legendary Spanish goalkeeper, Iker Casillas, was less fortunate than Christian Eriksen. Casillas was unable to return to football after suffering a heart attack. The goalkeeper survived it during a training session in 2019 when he played for Portuguese side Porto.
During one of the exercises, Iker felt that he could not breathe, as if something was squeezing his chest, approached the trainer and said that he did not know what was happening to him, and then fainted. He was quickly hospitalized. At the medical facility, doctors provided appropriate resuscitation care to the footballer, and his life was saved.
After that incident, Casillas never played again, but continued to train. Two years later, he became one of the main investors in Spanish football. Casillas also invests a lot of money in the development of medical technologies to save patients with heart attacks. This topic has become the most important for him. He admitted to reporters that after a heart attack, he was born a second time and will always help people who have big problems with the "main engine of the body.
I feel great now. Money is also important, but above all, we want to make the world a better place. We help people by simplifying the diagnosis of diseases, finding jobs for former athletes, and making football technology accessible to amateurs. This is just the beginning, we have many plans
As a reminder, Iker Casillas is considered the most titled goalkeeper in the history of football. He has won the Spanish Championship, the Spanish Cup, the Champions League, the European Championship twice, and the World Cup.
Chris Letang
Sport: ice hockey player
Country: Canada
Age: 37 years old
Kris Letang is one of the best defensemen in the National Hockey League, the most prestigious hockey championship in the world. The man has been playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins for almost 20 years. Together with the club, Chris became the NHL champion (Stanley Cup) three times: 2009, 2016, 2017).
In 2014, the defender suffered his first stroke. He lost consciousness at home and could not move for several hours. Chris didn't go to the doctor right away, but did so a couple of days later when he started feeling nauseous. Then the examination showed that Letang was born with a small hole in the heart wall. However, the recovery was surprisingly too fast. The hockey player returned to the ice in just two months.
Chris suffered a second stroke eight years later, in 2022, when his team informed him about it. But even here, the hockey player was lucky, he had no traces of this fatal accident.
"Chris reported the symptoms to the team staff on Monday and was immediately taken to hospital for testing," said Ron Hextall, the club's general manager. "The results of the tests were shocking, but we are grateful that Chris is doing well. We are grateful to the medical staff and the doctors. He is a warrior on the ice, but first and foremost he is a son, father, husband and friend. His health is our number one priority.
Now Kris Letang continues to play in the NHL, and nothing seems to portend trouble.
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Lance Armstrong
Type of sport: cycling
Country: USA
Age: 53 years old
Testicular cancer
Lance Armstrong is a vivid example of a victory over cancer, which, according to doctors, should not have left the athlete a chance. In October 1996, the 25-year-old cyclist was diagnosed with testicular cancer. The cancer was so advanced that it had already metastasized in Arsmstrong's stomach, lungs and brain. He underwent surgery to remove the testicle, but it was not enough.
Lance wrote in his autobiography that he believed he would live. And this is despite the fact that Armstrong started coughing up blood.
The athlete underwent the second surgery in America on his brain. Doctors did not rule out that this operation could end tragically and Armstrong would be disabled. But everything went well. Miraculously, Lance began to recover. After a short recovery, he returned to big sports.
Armstrong won the world's most prestigious cycling race, the Tour de France, 7 times in a row. In 2012, he admitted that he was constantly doping. For this, Lance was stripped of all his titles. Although the attitude towards him has become colder, the rider is still respected for his victory over cancer.
Eric Abidal
Sport: football
Country: France
Age: 45 years old
Liver cancer
Eric Abidal, a multiple Champions League winner and one of the best defenders of his generation, won his main victory off the football field. Frenchman defeated liver cancer.
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In 2009, the then Barcelona player Eric Abidal contracted swine flu. In 2011, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. Doctors hypothesized that the flu had provoked the growth of metastases. Immediately, he underwent a multi-hour surgery to remove them, and two weeks later Abidal returned to play soccer.
However, the disease did not recede. In 2012, Abidal underwent a liver transplant. The Frenchman played with the new organ until 2014.
Fatalities
These stories are just a small part of how athletes have overcome illnesses and returned, or continued to compete with fatal symptoms. In fact, there are dozens of such examples, and even hundreds.
There are also cases when athletes died during competitions.
Boxer Levander Johnson got a brain tumor in a fight with Jesus Chavez and died in intensive care. A large number of bodybuilders: Dalas McCarver, Nasser El-Sonbaty, Rich Piana, Sean Roden passed away because the stress of training and most likely anabolic drugs did their job - the athletes' hearts could not stand it.
There are plenty of fatalities and disabilities among athletes. So, what is it: is it the price for great success, or does modern sport simply offer trends that are incompatible with normal human life?
Everyone will have their own answer, and we are in no way condemning the rules of big sports, because it is up to everyone to choose whether they agree to them and become a professional.
