Triathlon swimming.
Credit: KotoImages – Shutterstock
Tragedy at the Torremolinos triathlon as two athletes suffer fatal heart attacks while competing.
The spirit of possibly the most attended sporting event on the Costa del Sol of the year was dampened by the deaths of two competitors just moments apart. On Thursday, October 17, five thousand participants from around 80 countries took to the streets and coastline of Torremolinos for one of the toughest physical challenges on the sporting calendar at the Grand Final of the World Triathlon Series.
The atmosphere turned sour just after 4pm during the swimming section of the event when one of the competitors, a 71-year-old man from Mexico who had already complained of feeling unwell, suffered a fatal heart attack in the water. Moments later, the terrible news of a second death, that of a 57-year-old British man also put down to cardiac arrest.
One minute s applause for the lost athletes
The families of both men asked the organisers not to cancel or postpone the rest of the event and not to hold a minute’s silence in their honour, but instead to hold a minute’s applause at the end of the day.
4,000 of the total 5,000 participants were amateur athletes in a broad range of age categories. In the Torremolinos competition, the oldest categories are one for men between 90 and 94 years, and in the female category, 85 to 89 years.
While tragic events such as this are not very common in Malaga province, they can happen. Two British athletes died in the 2018 and 2024 Ironman competitions in Marbella; a 58-year-old Norwegian man reached the finish line of the 2022 Half Marathon; and a 30-year-old runner in Capuchins in the 2019 Urban Race.
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