Former Olympic marathoner Ricardo Ribas wants to turn the “great fear” he recently experienced that forced him to undergo cardiac ablation into an opportunity to include more tests in the list of mandatory sports medical tests.
“Now I want to rest for 10 or 15 days, and then I would like to meet with the federations, the Olympic Committee and the Institute of Youth and Sports to draw attention to the need to include exams such as the 24-hour Holter in the annual list,” he says. Ricardo Ribas told the agency Lusa less than a week after undergoing cardiac ablation.
The former long-distance runner and half-distance runner, who considers himself a man of “examples”, wants the health problem he went through, which has now even made him a case study for the Hospital de Guimarães, where he had surgery, to awaken conscience .
“I am absolutely sure that there are many athletes, especially athletes in the squad, who do not undergo testing and should do so. We think that we are selling health and in the end we are not doing that. There must be tighter control, even among those who do pass all the required exams, as has always been my case”, refers Ricardo Ribas, who saw his life change last October 26 when he did a training “at a walking pace”.
“It was a sign from above, the doctors said it was an angel,” he says, explaining that during that workout he started getting “heartbeats of 220 and peaking at 245.”
During the episode, Ricardo Ribas says he “thought only of his two daughters and his wife” and experienced a “terrifying sense of powerlessness”.
After several tests, the diagnosis came two days later, resulting in the Holter: atrial fibrillation, a type of heart rhythm disorder in which there are very irregular heartbeats, usually fast.
Since January 2022, when he had covid-19, Ricardo Ribas, who averaged 100 kilometers a week, felt that “something was not right, because he felt some heart rhythm disturbances”, after undergoing medical tests that revealed nothing
Three months after being diagnosed, Ricardo Ribas underwent catheter ablation of arrhythmias last Wednesday, a procedure that took about two and a half hours that doctors said “solved the problem.”
Ricardo Ribas, 45, jokingly said on his page on the social network Facebook that the medical procedure took a little less than the two hours and thirty-eight minutes it took to run the marathon of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and believes explains that during the recovery, which is “going really well”, the hardest part is not being able to drink coffee.
“The doctors say everything is fine, I feel fine,” assures Ricardo Ribas, who is married to the athlete Dulce Félix, adding that once the recovery period is over, he wants to go for a walk and “run calmly , don’t take the body to the limit”.
Ricardo Ribas, who left the competition last year, is the founder and coach of the club Team El Comandante, which has 150 member athletes, all of whom must undergo a sports medical exam.
“The athletes in my club have always undergone tests, but sometimes I have devalued them. At the moment I force them to undergo medical and sports examinations,” he assures, warning: “Health problems knock on the door when you least expect it” .
Source: DN
