A visit to the doctor resulted in a dash to hospital, where testing confirmed serious heart damage. To have significant heart damage at my age is a bit worrying but there are other high performance athletes it happens to. While in hospital Gill discovered one in five people die from his condition. High performance sport is challenging athletes to put their bodies under strain all the time," Hellier said. Athletics NZ high performance director Scott Goodman echoed those sentiments.

Source: Otago Daily Times December 14, 2017 18:56 UTC