Page 1 of 2

Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 11 Aug 2014, 1:40pm
by TonyR
BBC reporting that cyclist Kris Cook, 36, sadly collapsed and died at Newlands Corner during yesterday's Prudential Surrey 100 sportive. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28742179

His Just Giving page if anyone feels like making a donation to his cause in memory of a fellow cyclist.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 11 Aug 2014, 3:22pm
by yakdiver
Condolences to family and friends RIP

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 12 Aug 2014, 7:28pm
by Colin_P
Sudden Cardiac arrest.

I've suffered a few myself and am one of the lucky 5% to survive the first one.

It makes my mind boggle that on such a large sporting event they didn't seemingly have proper emergency medical facilities. For anything like this there should be an AED available or even several along the route. An AED is an Automatic External Defibrillator.

Kris Cook might well be alive today if those treating him had access to one.

Rest in peace Kris.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 12 Aug 2014, 8:51pm
by mercalia
Colin_P wrote:It makes my mind boggle that on such a large sporting event they didn't seemingly have proper emergency medical facilities. For anything like this there should be an AED available or even several along the route. An AED is an Automatic External Defibrillator.


I was up in London ( not taking part not my type of game ) & I was struck at how old some of the riders where. You would have thought they would expect quite a few incidents and plan for it

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 12 Aug 2014, 9:35pm
by mjr
Oh but you go and ride these events completely unprepared. If you rode to prepare, you might become a - gasp! - cyclist. Here's another one doing 400 miles on no preparation https://mobile.twitter.com/Emily_News/s ... 160704?p=v

It's a tribute to the accessibility of cycling that there aren't more incidents.

Thoughts with the nearest of the London 100 rider.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 12 Aug 2014, 10:27pm
by TonyR
Colin_P wrote:It makes my mind boggle that on such a large sporting event they didn't seemingly have proper emergency medical facilities. For anything like this there should be an AED available or even several along the route. An AED is an Automatic External Defibrillator.

Kris Cook might well be alive today if those treating him had access to one.

Rest in peace Kris.


How many would you need and how many people trained to use them? It was a 100 mile route so assuming a maximum allowable time to restore blood to the brain of 4 minutes and zero response time of getting the message out and AED moving you'd have to have one every four miles along the route or hope to get lucky in the location of any cardiac event. And that's assuming you could achieve 30mph response speed on country roads clogged with cyclists. In practice you'd probably need them at 1 mile intervals to be any use. I am sure they did have some on the route but probably far better to rely on a fast ambulance response time - Guildford was quite close to where it happened. I did have one ambulance go through in the leaving London leg and everyone moved over with the blues and twos going.

Its not unique to cycling either. This regularly happens on marathons. The London Marathon sudden cardiac death rate is 1 per 80,000 finishers so about par for this which has had one death now over three years of about 25,000 participants a year.

Not that any of that makes it less sad or less painful.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 12 Aug 2014, 11:07pm
by Colin_P
It took 45 minutes so I believe for an actual ambulance to get to him.

Seems like a bit too long.

An AED costs about £1500 and they should be scattered about all over the place. Hopefully they will become more popular in the near future.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 12 Aug 2014, 11:54pm
by TonyR
Colin_P wrote:It took 45 minutes so I believe for an actual ambulance to get to him.

Seems like a bit too long.

An AED costs about £1500 and they should be scattered about all over the place. Hopefully they will become more popular in the near future.


His wife who was with him is reported as saying it took 20-30 mins. Given the conditions - Chris Boardman who was riding it described them as “went from torrential to biblical and then to just horrendous” - with flooded roads all over the place its not surprising the ambulance took some time to get there despite the proximity but those were very unusual conditions. It does appear though that there were medical staff from the organisers with him from pretty early on giving CPR and the delay was maybe not the cause of his death which was an hour and a half later at the hospital.

I'm also not sure how well an AED would have performed given that everything would have been soaking wet and high voltages don't generally mix well with water.

Donations now are up to almost £35k so some good will come of this and hopefully that will be of some comfort to his partner.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 13 Aug 2014, 5:56am
by eileithyia
Guess there are a few issues here; Unfit possibly overweight people suddenly taking up a bike, going for a ride ( I believe he was not particularly 'old'). How many times do you see the advice; seek medical advise before taking up exercise....
An underlying condition that led to the Arrest ( a neighbour died in marathon at 26 due to a cardiac condition and he was a regular marathon runner).
AED were probably available along the route as so many towns, villages, shopping centres etc do have them, but as said you probably need them every mile along the route plus someone to operate them.
When we do our resuscitation days at work, we are advised if someone arrests at the local shopping centre we are probably best leaving the trained operative to operate the AED because they have been trained to use that specific piece of kit, and are probably very eager to try out those skills....

CPR, death and time of death can be very different things. If someone has collapsed with an arrest and requires CPR then (as we are told on our resus days) they are already dead, you cannot do any more harm... (and why we are taught to recognise peri-arrest conditions and call help before the arrest occurs). Arrival of ambulance and transfer to hospital would mean continuation of CPR but time of death will only be when resus attempts are abandoned and a doctor officially declares the person is dead. Incidently my dad was already in the ambulance when he arrested and still did not survive his heart attack.... so speed of emergency services arrival may not have necessarily had a bearing on the outcome.

Given the numbers riding it is surprising there are not more such incidents in these events.

Condolences to family and those around who witnessed the event.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 13 Aug 2014, 7:55am
by timdownieuk
Colin_P wrote:Sudden Cardiac arrest.

I've suffered a few myself and am one of the lucky 5% to survive the first one.

It makes my mind boggle that on such a large sporting event they didn't seemingly have proper emergency medical facilities. For anything like this there should be an AED available or even several along the route. An AED is an Automatic External Defibrillator.

Kris Cook might well be alive today if those treating him had access to one.

Rest in peace Kris.


On a 100 mike route to be sure of having an AED (and people who know how to operate one) within life-saving distance of every rider could require an awful lot of them.

Sometimes [inappropriate word removed] happens.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 13 Aug 2014, 10:45am
by Colin_P
It does, [inappropriate word removed] sadly happens.

There is no real solution.

I am in the lucky 5% to have survived one so it is an issue very close to me.

Until it happens quite often there is nothing that would indicate it would.

Prior to mine, I always had a very good set of stats, blood pressure, heart function and resting heart rate. I was in good shape and there were no indications of what was to happen.

This goes for countless cases of this, seemingly fit healthy people keeling over out of the blue with no previous indications. Ironically a lot of super fit athletes, especially long distance ones are putting themselves at risk of atrial fibrillation. AF itself though is not immediately dangerous but can quickly degenerate to become something worse. All those aging willowy elite cyclists who boast of very low resting heart rates are particularly at risk but probably do not realise it. Probably one or two on here in fact.

The thing that gets me about this case though is the time it took to get a defib on the scene.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 13 Aug 2014, 12:27pm
by TonyR
Colin_P wrote:The thing that gets me about this case though is the time it took to get a defib on the scene.


Its not clear that that would have made any difference:

"Cardiac rapid response units and the use of portable defibrillators have contributed to the survival of many people who have collapsed with ventricular fibrillation. However, in cases of sudden cardiac death, the heart appears to be resistant to attempts at resuscitation using methods based on current knowledge. Early defibrillation in these cases rarely results in survival."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_cardiac_death

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 13 Aug 2014, 12:30pm
by Ayesha
Should there be 'qualifiers' for large over-subscibed Sportive and charity rides?
Like letters of reference from Club secretaries, or a recent Audax medal?

How do the organisers know the entry is capable of finishing? Or do they care?

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 13 Aug 2014, 12:36pm
by Bicycler
Given that many people build up to these rides as a target or sign themselves up as a challenge, requiring previous experience of riding that distance might be counter-productive.

Re: Cyclist dies on Surrey 100

Posted: 13 Aug 2014, 12:42pm
by kwackers
I remember doing some fag packet maths based on the number of runners in marathons and the number of deaths running them.
Whilst it was rough and ready the conclusion I came to was that the number of deaths was proportionally less than the number who died not running (and by a decent factor iirc).
Which meant you were safer running a marathon. :wink:

Be interesting to plug some 'proper' numbers in and see if this is actually true.