A journalist who witnessed sportswriter Grant Wahl collapse before his death early Saturday has recounted the chaotic scramble to save him.
Josh Glancy, a correspondent for The Sunday Times, wrote a piece for the Times detailing those final moments during the Argentina vs Netherlands match in Qatar. He said “it had been the game of the tournament,” when he suddenly heard a voice calling for a medic from the press box.
Glancy said he and others stood by shocked as they watched medics start performing CPR on 49-year-old Wahl—”a terrible sign.”
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“An even worse sign was that they kept going and going,” he wrote.
The efforts to save Wahl “went on for many minutes,” he said, even as fans in the stadium, oblivious to the crisis unfolding, roared in reaction to the soccer match. Another journalist who’d been rooming with Wahl was left shellshocked, Glancy wrote, muttering, “This isn’t real.”
Glancy said he and others in the press box were distressed by the lack of a defibrillator nearby, questioning how a “state-of-the-art” stadium could be unprepared for the medical emergency.
“Eventually a stretcher came to take Wahl away. His face was covered. We all knew,” he wrote, adding that “just minutes earlier, he’d been tweeting excitedly about the game.”
Wahl’s exact cause of death has not yet been determined. His brother, Eric Wahl, said in an emotional Instagram video that he believed foul play was involved.
Wahl ran afoul of local Qatari authorities in late November, when he wore a rainbow T-shirt to the Ahmed bin Ali Stadium in defiance of a crackdown on expressions of support for the LGBTQ+ community. He took to Twitter at the time to say he’d been temporarily detained by security after refusing to remove the T-shirt.
And shortly before his death, he publicly criticized Qatari authorities over the deaths of migrant workers involved in projects for the soccer tournament.
Flowers are laid at a media tribune desk in memory of the American journalist Grant Wahl, who passed away yesterday.
Reuters“My husband and I have been on the phone with the state department, and Grant’s wife has been in contact with people in the Biden administration,” Wahl’s brother tweeted late Friday Seattle time.
“I spoke with Grant just the other day for his birthday. He thought he’d caught bronchitis. I no longer believe that’s what it was. Grant told me he'd received death threats. His phone better be among his things at Hamad hospital,” he wrote.
Wahl had written on his Substack about feeling sick in the days before his death.
“My body finally broke down on me. Three weeks of little sleep, high stress and lots of work can do that to you. What had been a cold over the last 10 days turned into something more severe on the night of the USA-Netherlands game, and I could feel my upper chest take on a new level of pressure and discomfort,” he wrote Monday.
“I didn’t have Covid (I test regularly here), but I went into the medical clinic at the main media center today, and they said I probably have bronchitis. They gave me a course of antibiotics and some heavy-duty cough syrup, and I’m already feeling a bit better just a few hours later. But still: No bueno.”
His agent, Tim Scanlan, told The New York Times that Wahl had also spoken of problems sleeping.
“He wasn’t sleeping well, and I asked him if he tried melatonin or anything like. He said, ‘I just need to like relax for a bit,’” Scanlan was quoted saying.
Just hours after his death, Wahl was honored by FIFA in the same stadium where he was meant to be covering the match late Saturday. A tribute was set up to him in the media seat that had been assigned to him, featuring flowers and a framed photograph.
Photos of Wahl were also shown to fans on two big screens, prompting applause.
“Tonight we pay tribute to Grant Wahl at his assigned seat in Al Bayt Stadium. He should have been here,” FIFA said in a statement.
