Renowned football journalist Grant Wahl died suddenly last week at the World Cup in Qatar, from a ruptured blood vessel leading to his heart, his family announced on Wednesday.
His death was caused by a weakness in the artery wall known as an aneurysm, which can bulge out and then rip. An autopsy conducted in New York revealed that Mr. Wahl, 49, had experienced a severe rupture in the ascending aorta, which carries oxygen-rich blood from the heart.
The autopsy ended the speculation that had spread after Mr. Wahl’s death. Social media posts allude to a link to a Covid vaccine or the Qatar government’s retaliation for an article Mr. Wahl wrote about the immigrant’s death.
Mr. Wahl’s wife, Dr. Celine Gounder, is a leading infectious disease physician who has emerged during the coronavirus pandemic and has advised President Biden’s transition team on Covid-19. She and the rest of the family wasteespecially speculation linking his death to vaccines, saying it was particularly offensive because of her work.
Dr Gounder said in an interview on Tuesday that he probably died instantly and felt no pain. She said: “I was really relieved to know what it was.
Mr. Wahl had caught a cold a few days before collapsing, and wrote in the news and on Twitter that he felt his body breaking down after weeks of sleep deprivation and long days of watching matches.
He has just turned 49 and is still quite healthy, so his death has shocked friends, family and readers. Dr Gounder said his runny nose and other cold symptoms were most likely unrelated to the aneurysm.
Dr Gounder said that, until the autopsy, she worried that perhaps she could have prevented his death if they had talked more often while he was in Qatar or if she was there with him.
Mr. Wahl’s brother, Eric Wahl, initially said on social media that he suspected foul play and later suggested his brother may have had a blood clot in his lung. On Tuesday, Eric Wahl said he no longer believes those were the factors that led to his brother’s death.
An autopsy revealed Mr Wahl had an ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm, a condition where the weakened blood vessels are often undetected. As an aneurysm grows, it can cause coughing, shortness of breath or chest pain, some of which doctors consulted by Mr Wahl in Qatar can attribute to a cold and possibly bronchitis. manage.
In rare cases, an aneurysm can rupture and lead to death. Doctors are now looking into whether Mr Wahl has Marfan syndrome, a risk factor for this type of aneurysm. He was tall, thin, and had long arms, all of which could be signs of a genetic syndrome.
Mr. Wahl joined Sports Illustrated in 1996 as a fact-checker, the traditional approach of young journalists, and wrote hundreds of articles on a variety of sports for the magazine over the next two decades. follow.
An original profile, a cover story about a teenager LeBron James in 2002, remains a cornerstone for both the writer and the subject 20 years later. Mr Wahl would occasionally reminisce about it with his 850,000 followers on Twitter, and Mr James talked about what it meant to him and his family while eulogizing the writer at a news conference and on social media last weekend.
But Mr. Wahl is best known for writing about football, a subject he began covering as a student reporter at Princeton University in the early 1990s. Through books, tweets, podcasts and articles magazine, he became the guide for a new generation of fans and readers to learn about the game.
He also uses his profile and social media speakers to highlight his growth women’s soccerscope of corruption in football, human rights violations and gay rights.
Mr. Wahl had worked at Sports Illustrated for more than 23 years when the magazine’s publisher suddenly Fired him about a pandemic-related pay cut dispute. But he already had a large following at the time and started an email newsletter and podcast that quickly became a hit.
In Qatar, Mr. Wahl is watching his eighth World Cup. He was in the press box during the final minutes of the quarter-final between Argentina and the Netherlands when he collapsed.
According to two New York Times journalists present, paramedics tried to revive Mr Wahl for about 20 minutes before he was transported to a hospital in Doha. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Dr. Gounder’s relationships with the Biden administration and public health agencies, including the New York City health department, helped her bring the unembalmed body to the United States for an autopsy.
Dr Gounder said she wanted to determine the circumstances of her husband’s death in part to quell speculation online. “I wanted to make sure that the conspiracy theories about his death were quashed,” she said.
