Belgian Olympic marathoner forced to retire after just 4 races
On Tuesday, Michael Somers, 30, revealed serious health problems leading him to end his career
Photo by:
Kevin Morris
On Tuesday, Belgian Olympic marathoner Michael Somers took his cardiologist’s advice and announced his early retirement from elite competition at only 30, after racing just four marathons in the span of his short career. In a video on Instagram, the athlete revealed that newly-discovered heart problems will keep him from continuing to tackle the 42.2K distance without putting himself at risk for further complications.
“After four marathons, I was only at the beginning of my marathon career,” Somers said. “The realization that this fantastic part of my life is over is hard to accept.”
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A few weeks ago, during a routine check-up, Somers’s heart showed myocardial fibrosis, the development of scar tissue, which puts a strain on the heart muscle by reducing its ability to efficiently pump blood. This puts him at risk for developing cardiac arrhythmias (heartbeat irregularities) or potentially for going into heart failure (the inability of the heart to pump blood efficiently). The runner’s doctors have advised him to step back from elite athletics.
“I currently have more questions than answers, but the conclusion remains that, with the damage to my heart, top-level sport is impossible,” Somers said. “I’m going to have to find a way to respect and accept the doctors’ advice. My career is over.”
Extreme endurance sports
While exercise is generally very beneficial for the heart, intense training regimes in extreme endurance sports may cause injury to the heart muscle, especially in male athletes. A 2017 study of 55 elite male and 30 elite female triathletes found that 10 of the males studied (or 18 per cent), but none of the women, showed evidence of myocardial fibrosis.
At the Paris 2024 Olympics, Somers placed 22nd in the marathon, running 2:10:32. The Asics athlete boasts a personal best of 2:08:09 from 2023, and clocked his half-marathon personal best of 1:00:57 at January’s Seville half-marathon in Spain–his last competition.
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Somers will have to sit out the upcoming European running championships, set to take place on his home turf in Leuven and Brussels in April. He had previously revealed in an interview that he was aiming for gold.
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