Discussion: Deaths in Sweden

I'm not familiar... What happened?

About a half dozen orienteers between ~17-35 years old suddenly died over a period of a couple of years. Once people noticed a pattern, people started wondering what was going on. Was it some sort of infection? An unusual random occurrence of young people who's hearts stop? Heart infections caused by training when sick?

This was the period when I was living in Stockholm and I remember some of the discussions and, especially, people being reminded to not train through an illness but take the time to recover.

Melker Karlsson was one of the people who died. He was about 25 and on the national team (I'm pretty sure his last big race before he died would have been the World Cup in Pawtuckaway). I'd moved home by the time Melker died.

Part of what made the podcast interesting to me was that it was about a time and events that I have strong memories of.

If you Google search, you'll find a lot of articles that suggest that people were abusing EPO. I don't think that's what was going on.

What's the podcast?

P3 Dokunetär - an old episode.

I guess it's this one:
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/447845?progra...

Yep, that's it.

Interesting read, thanks for sharing.

I think this is important:

"Orienteers were considered elite if having achieved a national ranking at
least once in the past five years or when attending a school for especially talented
orienteers."

Melker Karlsson fits that definition, but so do hundreds (maybe thousands) of orienteers at a much lower level than Melker.