Rachel Apa, 24, Dies After Collapsing in the New York City Marathon
Rachel Apa, 24, died after collapsing near the end of the New York City Marathon on Sunday, November 1. It was her first marathon.
She went down in Central Park, two miles from the finish, according to The Guardian. NBC New York placed the collapse near mile 24 of the 26.2-mile course. A bystander gave her CPR first. Then race medical staff used a defibrillator, a device that sends an electric shock to try to restart a heart.
Apa was taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center. The Guardian reported that she died there at 9:40pm.
Her father, Steve Apa, said she died of rhabdomyolysis. That is a rare condition in which muscle is damaged and breaks down, releasing substances into the blood that can harm the kidneys. The New York Times reported that exertion can bring it on.
Apa was from Lewisberry, Pennsylvania. Her parents are Steve and Michelle Apa. She played field hockey in college and had recently started an MBA, a master's degree in business administration, at Charleston Southern University.
She was running as part of the Parkinson's Champions team, in honour of her late grandfather, who had the disease. Marathon training is a long commitment, and for Apa the race was meant to carry a family memory across the finish line.
New York Road Runners, the organisation that puts on the race, said the last time a participant died from a medical incident in the race was in 2024.
Apa's family has not yet said how they want to be remembered beyond the race. Those who knew her now face the same question that follows every death on a course like this: what happened to her body in the final miles, and whether anything could have changed it. For now, the facts are a 24-year-old who had just started her first marathon, a race that ended in an emergency in Central Park, and a family in Pennsylvania grieving for her.
