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Posted by Grant on 5. January 2009 03:27
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While it might sound like an outlandish crime drama from Hollywood, this
blurb on the Attackpoint discussion forum caught my attention: A rash of Sudden Unexpected Death (SUD) cases struck elite Swedish orienteers 20 years ago. Instead of a screenplay, however, this story is captured in
a 46 page doctoral dissertation
published a few years ago -- if you can get past all the technical medical jargon, it is actually pretty interesting. The numbers aren't all that large, in absolute terms, but when you consider how many elite orienteers . . . who are Swedish . . . and male . . . died during this time it is certainly significant.
After looking through this dissertation, and doing some other online research, a picture unfolds . . . from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, a span of about 15 years, top Swedish orienteers died during training or competing at a rate of about 1 every 4 months! There is supporting material, such as
this article about the "orienteering disease" from the International Herald Tribune in 1992.
They now attribute these cases to a particular infection that contributed to
cardiomyopathy, and cite high-intensity training without resting to be a contributing factor. Furthermore, with orienteering being a sport where you spend a lot of time running through the woods, the research indicates some link to wildlife aiding in transmission of the infection.
Now, I'm not a doctor so I can't authoritatively tell good medicine from bad, but the whole "wildlife" angle sounds like a reach to me. How many squirrels do you pet during an orienteering meet? C'mon! The high-intensity training dimension, however, I can't argue with as I'm sure the orienteering elite from Sweden train as hard as any in the world. Sweden is credited with inventing the sport of orienteering, so maybe they push even harder than most?
As I type this, I'm struggling with a head-cold and debating how hard to push during my workouts. Switzerland isn't that far from Sweden, either, and I've been known to do a lot of running through the woods with a map. I did see squirrel once. Could this "orienteering disease" have migrated into central Europe? I think I'm in the clear, though, as I'm far from an elite level! My mediocrity to the rescue! Plus, if I'm at risk, there are thousands of ultra runners and other endurance athletes out there who are tempting fate with every workout -- the law of averages is in my favor.
In all seriousness, this must have been devastating at the time. A mystery illness striking down the fittest athletes? And why Sweden? And why just men?
Is it just me, or does this all sound like a script for the next Ben Stiller movie, a
Zoolander murder mystery where an evil cabal is intent on destroying Swedish orienteering by putting a contact poison on the orienteering punches?