Daniel Jarque´s death reopens the polemic about the health in the sport (Yahoo)

The death of the central defender and captain of the Espanyol of Barcelona, Daniel Jarque, at the age of 26, on last August 8th, comes back to generate polemic on this strange phenomenon that brings every time more football players and renews the doubt regarding the causes, besides of the impact that same produces in the environment.

Jarque died in a moment in which he wasn´t playing football, in his room of the hotel in which the concentration of the Espanyol in this Italian city of Coverciano, in mid of a tour over Italy preparing the team for the next editions of the Spanish League, to be initiated and now the result of the autopsy is anxiously awaiting, same is being done in Italy, thus to be a little more aware about said death that adds to that of the footballists Antonio Puerta of the Sevilla, in 2007 or the Hungarian Miklos Feher of the Benfica in 2004, the Cameroonian Vivien Foe in 2003 or the Brazilian Serginho and Cristiano da Lima also in 2004 and on the same day as Feher.

For the time being no medical comments have been pronounced on the coincidence of the death that occurred in the month of August that uses to be very hot in the North hemisphere. And not only death but also dramatic situations as that of the midfielder of Real Madrid and of the Spanish team Ruben De la Red vs Real Union of Irun for the Kings Cup in 2008 that fainted and was unconscious for half an hour and after a thorough control he was advised to leave for some time the practice until new notice.

In change, a great polemic generated a very hard article in the newspaper “Corriere della Sera” in Italy that declared doubts and puts under suspect not only what happened to Jarque but it relates to Puerta´s death, to what occurred with De la Red and with the Spanish cyclists in the last International competitions.

“Too many cases to treat then as fatality” says the reporter Giuseppe Toti who asks himself “What does happen in Spain in the sport in general” and relates those cases of football with the Operation Puerto through which was discovered a doping that involved Spanish cyclists giving place that the ex French champion Greg Lemond questioned in the prestigious newspaper “Le Monde” the Spanish Alberto Contador, winner of the last Tour de France.

”May a runner with water from the faucet get the speed in ascension and the potency produced in Verbier?” Lemond asks in an article published the last July23 and the Italian newspaper refers to a supposed relation between the doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, involved in the Operation Puerto, and the Spanish football. The reporter Toti insists that fifteen death in the sport in Spain since 1999 “goes against the nature” and he relates it with the consuming in sport of the pharmacologic substances.

The director of the sport newspaper “As” of Madrid, Alfredo Relaño, on his part sustains in his editorial that he await the autopsy of Jarque from Italy and admits that the death of the defender “has awaken some phantoms that have reopened even the case of Josep Guardiola”, the present coach of Barcelona, already dismissed by the Italian Justice in a supposed case of doping when he was playing in the Brescia, though the veteran reporter clears up that Spain “ is not any more a free territory for doping as some years ago that remained in the memory of the Spanish cyclists that were disqualified in Italy or France but they had no problem to run afterwards the Vuelta de España.

From the sport medicine, the cardiologist Araceli Baraita, member of the Spanish Cardiology Society (SEC) and of the Superior Sport Council, sustains that the death of Jarque could have occurred as consequence of “a virus that could provoke a miocarditis and cardiac insufficiency” and explains it that the sportsmen “uses to have immunologic systems very deficient” and advises therefore that at the first line of fever or general discomfort, a consultation with a doctor is necessary. Baraita neither discards that the death cause of Jarque is “a congenital cardiopathy (as it seem occurred with Puerta two years ago) because in this case, “the cardiac movements may be altered even in resting, sleeping” and though genetic tests may be conduced as prevention, “ there are less than sixty percents of sensibility and every day there appear new virus mutations, difficult to understand”

What is true is that every year there die in Spain between twenty and twenty five sportsmen in sudden way. Though Jarque used to go under constant medical control and now cardiac irregularity was know. Exactly two weeks before his death even the president of Spain Nicolas Sarkozy frightened the inhabitants of his country when he fainted meanwhile was practicing footing.

The director of the Unidad de Arritmias in the Spanish hospital Marques de Valdecilla, Juan Jose Olalla, he noticed in 2008 that the sudden death is one of the principal causes in industrialized countries.

Doctor Pedro Manonelles, secretary of the Spanish Sport Medicine Federation, told that in a study about the death of 180 sportsmen between 1995 and 2008, concluded that between 74 and 94 percent of the non traumatic were due to vascular reasons. Manonelles sustains that between sportsmen under thirty years, the principal causes of sudden death are the arrithmogenic ventricular dysplasia (13,72%) (hereditary). Hypertrophic cardiomiopathy, known as CMH (referred to the cardiac muscle) (11,76%) that is detected by electrocardiograms and congenial anomalies in coronary arteries (9,8%) very difficult to foresee.

Football world awaits the autopsy of Jarque. At least, will clear many doubts and several polemics about this sad case.