Former Olympian Dies: Meskerem Legesse Collapses, Baby Saved

A former Olympian is dead in Connecticut, according to a recent report from The Associated Press.

Meskerem Legesse, a pregnant 26-year-old living in Westport, Connecticut, collapsed inside of a Chinese restaurant on Monday. Doctors were unable to save the woman, but did manage to save her baby, friends reported Wednesday.

The cause of death has been attributed to a heart attack, according to a Wednesday report from the Courant.

Meskerem Legesse participated in the 1,500-meter run at the 2004 Athens Olympics, finishing 12th in the first-round heat with a 4:18:03 time. She continued to compete professionally in the United States up until 2011, but the AP noted that she hadn’t ran competitively in two years.

Legesse entered the Chinese restaurant with her young son to pick up an order for takeout. Surveillance video at the scene showed her entering the restaurant, sitting down, and then collapsing to the floor a few seconds later.

Hamden, Connecticut, firefighters and paramedics arrived on the scene and were able to save the unborn child thanks in part to CPR efforts that were conducted inside the restaurant and in the ambulance on the way to Yale-New Haven Hospital.

With Ethiopia’s former Olympian dead, she leaves behind an unspecified number of children and her children’s father, whom friends say Legesse had planned to marry.

She also leaves behind a running community in which she was “quite beloved,” according to Bill Staab, president of the NYC-based West Side Runners Club.

“She was charming, a very attractive woman and a good mother. It’s a tremendous loss to the Ethiopian running community in the New York area,” Staab said in comments to the Courant.

“It is very sad,” said friend Fatima Sene. “She was a very good person…. She would do anything for anybody. And she loved that little boy she left behind.”

Unfortunately, in the last 15 months, other athletes have joined the former Olympian, dead before their time.

Olympic gold medalist Bode Miller lost his brother Chelone Miller, an aspiring Olympian, in April. And in May 2012, Olympic hopeful Alexander Dale Oen, a Norwegian swimmer, died of cardiac arrest after a light training session.

In light of the Miller and Oen cases, do you think intense training played a part in the case of this former Olympian dead at just 26?

[Background Image via Sergei Bachlakov / Shutterstock.com]

[Meskerem Legesse Image via ShutterStock]