A 24-year-old woman running her first New York City Marathon collapsed in Central Park on Sunday, about two miles from the finish line, and died after doctors spent hours trying to save her.
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It happened near Mile 24, close to 85th Street, at about 1:33 p.m., according to timestamped photos and videos spectators shared with The New York Times. Rachel Apa was taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center, where doctors worked on her for more than six hours. Her father, Steve Apa, told the Times the cause of death was rhabdomyolysis. It’s a condition that exertion can bring on, in which muscle tissue breaks down and can poison the body.When muscle breaks down this way, proteins and electrolytes spill into the bloodstream. There they can damage organs, strain the heart and blood vessels, and overwhelm the kidneys. About 26,000 cases are reported in the U.S. each year, many of them in competitive athletes, and researchers think the real number is probably higher. Dr. Bradley Uren, an emergency medicine physician at University of Michigan Health, told the Times the condition can be fatal if it isn’t treated quickly. In Apa’s case, he said, the worst outcome seemed to happen very fast.
“Perfect health, perfect shape, 24 years old,” her father said.
Apa played Division I field hockey at Bucknell University and had trained for the marathon for months. She worked as a product manager for an electrical component company and had just started an MBA program at Charleston Southern University. She was running to raise money to fight Parkinson’s disease, which killed her grandfather. In a LinkedIn post, she called him one of her role models growing up and credited him with teaching her to stay active and push her limits.
A spectator, Michaela Nicholas, had cheered Apa on by name seconds before she fell. Nicholas is a hospital social worker. She told the Times she ran over and couldn’t find a pulse. Her fiancée shouted for a doctor, and three people, two of whom said they were physicians, took turns doing CPR while Nicholas held Apa’s hand. The New York Road Runners, which organizes the marathon, said its medical staff arrived and used a defibrillator on her before paramedics got there.
Nicholas said it felt like it took forever for official help to show up, and she called the wait unacceptable. The spectator footage shows a marathon medical crew on the scene by 1:40 p.m., with the defibrillator used sometime between 1:40 and 1:50. The FDNY said its ambulance arrived at 1:41 p.m. and its paramedics reached Apa a few minutes after that. The Road Runners didn’t immediately answer the Times’ questions about when its staff arrived and used the defibrillator.
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Her parents were following her race from two different places. Back home in Lewisberry, PA, her father tracked her on the marathon app and texted her encouragement at every mile. At Miles 18 and 19 she wrote back that she was hurting. After that she stopped answering, but she kept running. Her mother, Michelle Apa, had filmed her at Mile 14 in Queens, smiling and high-fiving toward the camera, and then went to wait for her at Mile 25. When the app kept showing Rachel at Mile 24 for several minutes, her mother went to find her. She got there as the ambulance was pulling away and followed in a second one.In a statement Monday, the Road Runners said it was deeply saddened by the death of one of its runners. The organization said the last time a runner died after a medical incident at the marathon was in 2024.
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