On March 12, 2021 Timothy O’Donnell suffered a heart attack while on the bike leg of the Challenge Miami triathlon. The race commentator noted, “He is going through a bit of a bad patch now,” as O’Donnell slowed and began to weave.
But it was much worse than that. This particular form of heart attack is known colloquially as the Widowmaker.
As a cardiologist noted, this heart attack occurs when the left anterior descending (LAD) artery, which supplies blood to the larger, front part of the heart, is blocked in its origin. These heart attacks occur when blood clots form around plaque from cholesterol that builds on the walls of one or more of those arteries, blocking blood from flowing.
“If there’s no blood flow to the heart, the heart muscles become deprived of oxygen and vital nutrients and heart muscle damage starts immediately,” says cardiologist Penelope Rampersad, MD, MSc, FRCPC.
After O’Donnell was first examined by a cardiologist in the ER, he was told, “We found a massive block in your LAD. “As O’Donnell recalls, “’The survival rate is 12 percent for an LAD block.’ In my particular case the block was on top of the artery, which makes it even worse.”
O’Donnell recalls those moments in detail, as he explains in the video below that the O'Donnell and Carfrae published today: “I felt a shooting pain down the left side of my chest. My jaw was clenched up. I was down on my bars and I just knew this is not a normal race pain. This is something more. I thought to myself: Is this a heart attack?”
My interior response: “You wouldn’t be able to push 300 watts when you’re having a heart attack. You would be falling over on the side of the track. It just started it get worse. Nausea. Just went right off the bike backwards.”
O’Donnell’s wife Mirinda said that in their first call, Tim downplayed it. “Just after the race, I had no idea anything had happened," she said. "I thought he was just a little bit off. He gave me a call and said he was just a little bit off. He didn't go into details. I think he maybe thought he was OK. But half an hour later he texted me. All he said was ‘I am really struggling.’ Tim is not one to complain. He is one of the toughest men that I know. He does not complain too much.”
An hour after the race she called him back. “Maybe you should go to the hospital.”
In retrospect Carfrae was quite shaken. “When bad things happen, they are never in your plans. At first, you can’t comprehend. We are obviously very grateful he made it through the incident.
"We understand only a small percentage of people make it through that sort of heart attack. When we consider it now, you comprehend this could have been the end. OK. It wasn't the end. But I don't know what we would have done. How we would have survived without him. Ultimately we came to the realization we were this close to not having Tim around.”
Indeed, O’Donnell reflects: “It is a crazy story. You don’t expect to hear this coming off a podium at the Ironman World Championship six months ago. To go to your next race and with no warning suffer a heart attack. But, when you start to dig into it, it happens a lot. There are a lot of healthy guys my age that have had the same experience. I am one of the fortunate ones that I am here to talk about it. And I lived to tell the story. And soon I want to tell what it is like to come back from this.”
