'So tragic': Michigander Ryan Shay dies during race
Runner's death mars competition - Dedicated Shay had enlarged heart, dad says
November 4, 2007
BY JO-ANN BARNAS
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
NEW YORK -- They didn’t speak at the starting line Saturday, in the anxious moments before the U.S. Olympic men’s marathon trials. But just three days earlier, Ryan Shay had let Clint Verran in on a secret.
“He had gotten married over the summer, and I could tell how happy he was,” Verran said of Shay, 28, who grew up in Central Lake, about halfway between Traverse City and Petoskey. “And he looked great — the leanest I had ever seen him, which was a good sign heading into the marathon. I told him that I heard he was dominating with his running group in Flagstaff (Ariz.). But he started talking about moving back to Michigan. He looked at me with a smile and said, ‘I’d be back if it was up to me.’”
Shay, one of the state's top distance runners and the 2003 U.S. marathon champion, died Saturday morning after collapsing about 5 1/2 miles into the trials race in Central Park. He was immediately given CPR, according to USA Track & Field. He transported by ambulance to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:46 a.m., said Mary Wittenberg, president of the New York Road Runners.
No cause of death was released, but Joe Shay, Ryan’s father and high school coach, told the Free Press on Saturday night that doctors thought his son suffered cardiac arrest and had died “before he hit the ground.”
Joe Shay said his son had been diagnosed with a larger than normal heart at 14, after a bout of pneumonia, and again at 16, after an auto accident. Shay said doctors in San Diego last spring told his son that he might need a pacemaker in the future. Shay also said his son had a resting pulse rate of 25, less than half that of a normal adult.
“What made him such a great runner,” Shay said, “was probably what killed him.”
Shay’s coach, Joe Vigil, said Shay had no health problems going into the race. The weather at Central Park was breezy and cool, in the middle 40s, almost perfect conditions for a 26.2-mile race.
At the 5K split, Shay appeared to be in perfect position. He needed 16:53 to cover those 3.1 miles, a 5:26-per-mile pace. He was in 21st place, 33 seconds behind the leader but only three seconds behind fourth-place Kyle O’Brien and fifth-place Brian Sell, who, like Verran, run for the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project based in Rochester Hills.
About two miles later, still in the main pack of runners, Shay hit the ground near the Central Park boathouse, a popular Manhattan tourist spot.
An autopsy was planned.
“I want a toxicology report done,” Joe Shay said, “because I don’t want anybody ever saying Ryan used drugs.”
In the close-knit community of distance running — particularly among world-class marathoners — Shay’s death was met by profound sadness and disbelief.
Most runners began learning of the tragedy shortly after crossing the finish line.
The three runners who earned berths onto the U.S. Olympic team for the 2008 Beijing Games — a group that included second-place Dathan Ritzenhein, a native of Rockford, and third-place Sell, who lives in Rochester Hills — all had ties to Shay.
At the postrace news conference, Sell broke down and cried, burying his head in his hands.
“I’d trade my Olympic spot in a split second to have him back,” Sell said later.
Dedicated to his sport
Ryan Shay was born May 4, 1979, in Ypsilanti. He was the fifth of Joe and Susan Shay’s eight children. Running ran in the family. The parents are prep coaches.
At Central Lake, Shay was the first Michigan boy to win four state cross-country titles. He was a Free Press scholar-athlete award winner in 1997 and was class valedictorian with a 4.0 grade-point average.
Shay went onto Notre Dame, where he became a nine-time All-America and 2001 NCAA champion in the 10,000 meters. After graduation, it was his father who suggested he hook up with Vigil at Team USA California at Mammoth Lakes.
Shay enjoyed almost immediate success. In 2003, he became the youngest U.S. men’s marathon champion in 30 years when he won the title at 23. That same year, he also won the USA half-marathon championship.
In an interview with the Free Press before the 2004 Olympic trials in Birmingham, Ala., Joe Shay recalled his son’s work ethic.
“I remember Ryan going out when it was 20 or 30 degrees below zero, because he didn’t want to miss a training day,” Shay said. “I would argue with him after he’d come in coated in snow and icicles, looking like the Abominable Snowman.
“People would call and say, ‘Do you know your son is out there running in this?’ I’d say, ‘It’s called dedication.’”
At the 2004 trials, Shay was among the favorites, but he struggled with a hamstring strain and finished 23rd. He then tried several months later to make the Athens Olympics on the track but finished 10th in the 10,000 meters. Still, he won five national road-racing titles at four distances: the 2003 marathon, 2003-04 half-marathon, 2004 20K and 2005 15K.
Shay’s parents weren’t in New York for the trials, but were headed Brooklyn, Mich., for the state cross-country championships at Michigan International Speedway. Two Central Lake girls had qualified. The Shays were 15 minutes from MIS when they received the news.
Couple built for distance
Ryan Hall, whose winning time of 2:09:02 Saturday set an Olympic trials record, was one of Shay’s closest friends.
Hall and his wife, Sara, attended Stanford, where Shay’s wife, Alicia Craig, was a former NCAA champion in the 10,000. Sara Hall was a bridesmaid in Alicia and Ryan Shay’s July 7 wedding in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Alicia hopes to qualify for the 10,000 at Beijing.
On Friday, Shay and Hall went on a training run together — four miles through Central Park, Sara Hall said. Ryan and Alicia met two years ago at the New York City Marathon, which both had attended as spectators.
“Alicia thought he was going to have a good race,” Sara Hall said of Saturday’s Olympic trials. “He had an incredible ability to push himself. I’ve seen him collapse on treadmill tests before. He could push himself to the limit. I also saw a soft side of him with Alicia. You could just tell his love for her.
“I think it shows how fragile life is, the different extremes. You’re on a high one moment, yet something completely opposite can be going on.”
Verran, from Lake Orion, said of Shay: “Ryan and I were on the same world championship team in Paris in 2003. When he first came out of college, he was a real aggressive runner and very confident — he wanted to take over the world. He was a guy of guy who went for it. It wasn’t part of his nature to lay back.
“This is so tragic.”
