Will Ryan Shays death during the 2007 trials go down as the most tragic race event to a elite runner

You sound absurd. Ryan Shay had a 2:14 marathon best. His death was a monumental loss, and no less so because he hadn’t run 2:09. There is no “extra layer of tragedy.” You sound like a child.

Kathy Ormsby, North Carolina State , 1986.

Read the Sports Illustrated story. Kathy Ormsby is a very private person who never said much publicly about what happened. A couple decades ago I was teaching a "Sports Literature" class to a class of female eighth grade basketball team members and we read that SI article. That prompted a discussion which led to everyone wanting to write to Kathy. "You can't ask her why she did what she did," was my only rule. Kathy responded with twelve letters that were individualized and personal. She's moved the ball forward for a lot of people through her work and I'm sure what she did with my class was a one-time thing. It literally took my breath away getting a manila envelope at school with "Ormsby" in the upper left corner.

One of my students told Kathy her team had just won their league's basketball end-of-year tournament. She responded with a big box of chocolates and a congratulatory note. All of those students will always remember her, am quite sure. We all were blown away.

That’s a cool assignment. You sound like a great teacher. I’m sure she was happy to receive those letters too.

Did you read their letters before mailing, to assure that they followed your rule?

Yeah, for sure. Eighth graders can get a little wild sometimes, you know? They were a solid group of kids. One of them was allegedly the girlfriend of the high school's senior quarterback, daydreamed a lot in class, sat off to the side by herself, not very connected with what was going on. After we read the SI story, she exclaimed, "We should write to her!"

Us old timers remember that his father posted here soon after Ryan’s passing. One of the greatest threads in the history of Let’s Run.

Us old timers remember that his father posted here soon after Ryan’s passing. One of the greatest threads in Let’s Run history.

I mean, plenty of runners have drunk driven and flipped their cars over before. But none were as newsworthy as when an American record holder that just finished 4th in the last Olympics 5000m did it.

The 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials (November 2007) was the first major running event I went to, as well as the first trip I'd ever taken by myself (I was 21). It was also the first time I met wejo in person. The first thing he said was that Ryan Shay died. I remember how emotionally conflicted everyone was. People were celebrating (the guys who made the team) and mourning at the same time.

Pre's death was tragic and upsetting. I heard about it on the morning of my last district race in high school and it deflated me. We all wanted to hammer it like Pre in May 1975. He influenced the whole wave of us in Illinois. But he brought that on himself. Ormsby's situation was tragic because she had difficulty dealing with internal and external pressures. She's a sympathetic figure who never gave up despite the life-changing nature of her injury. Shay's death was the most tragic because he was at the top of his game and it was completely unfathomable to everyone who knew him and Alicia. It made no sense at all.

Jeff Drenth's passing was similarly tragic.

ps://

vault.si.com

SCORECARD

Craig Neff

AN EXTRAORDINARY DEATH The world of running was beset by tragedy last week. In addition to the apparent suicide attempt of North Carolina State junior Kathy

Link:http://vault.si.com/vault/1986/06/16/s...

The entire lead pack died in that ultra in China in 2021, including Liang Jing, one of China's top trail ultra runners (who was regularly covered by irunfar. . . enough that I recognized his name when The news came). The 21 runners who died were the first 21 runners in the race at that point or pretty much that.

en.wikipedia.org

Gansu ultramarathon disaster

On 22 May 2021, twenty-one professional runners died from hypothermia while competing in a government-run 100-kilometre (62 mi) trail running race held in the Yellow River Stone Forest in Jingtai County, Gansu, China. The rac...

Link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_ultramarat...

That thread is a stark reminder of how good this place used to be.

My wife and I along with a good friend/running partner were there that day but did not know who went down until about 2 hours after the race ended. We were driving home on the NJ Turnpike and heard this tragic news. As a long-term runner and fan of our sport it remains a "Kennedy" moment for me. Coincidentally years later one of Ryan's teammate Luke Watson ran with our Track Club in Lancaster for a couple of years - so a nice connection from another solid, talented, humble, and kind - Notre Dame runner.

I'm 32 and don't think I never knew this full story. The name was familiar, but had no idea he passed away during a race.

Thank you for sharing this.

The 1985 plane crash of [some of] the Iowa State women's cross country team was certainly tragic.

I was in Central Park that day cheering on my former college teammate, Josh Cox. Running back and forth across the park with a whole bunch of strangers while we all huddled around this one guy who had a laptop so we could see what was going on during the race with the leaders was one of the coolest running-related things I had ever done at that point in my life. I distinctly remember an ambulance heading south in the park on the race course and wondering what in the world it was doing there. Somehow, due to the chaos of chasing Josh and the excitement of Ryan Hall's race, I completely missed the announcement about Ryan Shay. I didn't find out until later that day at the expo and I was floored. Someone suggested I visit a particular running website I had never heard of to read more about it.
That event is what introduced me to LetsRun.

Yeah, same with this thread. So glad this site wasn't around in 1986 when the Ormsby story was national news. The cruelty of the comments about her would have been unbelievably painful and if it happened today, few of those comments would be deleted. We know this.