Grant Wahl’s wife, Dr. Celine Gounder, told CBS News on Wednesday that the famous football journalist died due to a ruptured aortic aneurysm.
“He had an autopsy done here in New York by the New York City medical examiner’s office, and it showed he had an aortic aneurysm that had ruptured,” said Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and CBS News contributor. .
“It’s just one of these things that has probably been brewing for years, and for whatever reason, it was happening right now,” she told “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King in her first interview since her death. man.
Wahl died on Friday at the age of 49 while in Qatar to cover the World Cup. His agent, Tim Scanlan, had said the journalist appeared to have suffered “some kind of acute distress in the press room” of the stadium during the quarter-final between Argentina and the Netherlands, as the two teams began playing in extra time. Paramedics were called to the scene, Scanlan said, but were unable to revive him.
Qatari officials said in a statement that Wahl received “immediate medical treatment at the scene, which continued while he was transferred by ambulance to Hamad General Hospital.”
Gounder said she was finishing work calls on Friday when she saw messages coming in on Twitter, text and email, and realized “something was clearly wrong”. She was told her husband had collapsed and was taken to hospital after about 20 minutes of CPR. She tried to track down someone at the hospital to tell her what had happened.
“I kept asking: Did he have a pulse?” she said. “If he had a heartbeat when he left the stadium it would have been a good sign, but nobody would answer the question. And so for me I was scared.”
Gounder tweeted on Friday that she was “completely in shock” over her husband’s death and thanked Wahl’s “football family” and their friends for their support.
“To know that so many people loved him makes me feel a little less alone,” Gounder told King. “It’s like a warm hug when you really need it.”
A prolific journalist, Wahl wrote for multiple outlets and was a CBS Sports contributor. He was an analyst at CBS Sports headquarters during the World Cup in Qatar and wrote guest columns on the US men’s national team for CBS Sports. He also served as an editorial consultant for football documentaries on Paramount+.
Wahl spoke about his health on his Spotify podcast on Thursday, saying he contracted bronchitis while covering the World Cup. Scanlan told CBS News that Wahl had an “aggressive schedule” while in Qatar.
Tribute quickly poured in for Wahl after he died, from athletes like LeBron James to Billie Jean King.
His body was repatriated to the United States on Monday.
“I want people to remember him as this kind, generous person who was really committed to social justice,” Gounder said.
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