The wife of soccer journalist Grant Wahl said Wahl’s death last week while covering the World Cup was due to an undetected aortic aneurysm and said there was nothing suspicious about his death.
“Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium,” Dr. Celine Gounder wrote Wednesday on Wahl’s Substack account. “The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death.”
Wahl’s body and possessions were repatriated to the United States on Monday after his death last week. Gounder said an autopsy was performed by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
Wahl, a well-known U.S. sportswriter, collapsed in the media room during the Argentina-Netherlands match on Friday and could not be revived. He was 48.
Wahl fell back in his seat at Lusail Stadium during extra time, and reporters adjacent to him called for assistance.
Wahl said on his podcast, “Fútbol with Grant Wahl,” two days before he collapsed that he had bronchitis and went to the medical clinic twice. He had said on the podcast that he wasn’t back to “100 percent,” but was feeling better.
Emergency services workers responded very quickly, treated him for 20 or 30 minutes on site and then took him out on a stretcher.
The World Cup organizing committee said he was taken to Doha’s Hamad General Hospital.
Wahl wrote for Sports Illustrated for more than two decades and then started his own website.
He was a major voice informing an American public of soccer during a time of increased interest after the United States hosted the 1994 World Cup.
He also brought a critical eye to the international organizing bodies of the sport.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
