Tragedy struck this past weekend during the swimming portion of the Ironman Texas triathlon held in The Woodlands, just north of Houston.
Mara Flavia, a 38-year-old Brazilian influencer and triathlete, drowned during the event’s 2.4-mile swim. The drowning happened in Lake Woodlands near North Shore Park.
An investigation is currently ongoing.
According to a Facebook post from volunteer Shawn McDonald, that was shared by Ironman Texas, Flavia disappeared underwater shortly after the start of the swimming competition before her body was retrieved at around 9:30 a.m. local time.
The race started at 6:31 a.m. local time, and the Woodlands Fire Department told the Houston Chronicle that crews were notified around 7:30 a.m. about a possible missing swimmer.
“A group of younger volunteers in a kayak on the far side of the field were raising a flag, blowing a whistle, yelling for help,” McDonald said in the post. “Dozens of athletes were between us and them. I could see swimmers clinging to their kayak. I heard them say she went under. I had Mila hand me the paddle and I started calling out to the athletes around us to stop so I could cross. I made my way over in about 30 seconds. When I got there and asked what happened, they all said the same thing: She went under. Right here. Right below us. The panic and fear on their faces won’t leave me for a long time. The only athlete I remember seeing was an older gentleman, maybe in his 60s — hanging onto the side of the kayak, goggles removed, with the widest eyes I have ever seen. A thousand-yard stare. He had just watched someone disappear beneath him.”
McDonald added that he dove underwater and “felt her body with my foot,” came back to the surface to catch his breath, and went back down to try and retrieve the body.
“She was gone,” McDonald said. “I don’t know how to describe what that felt like. I tried again. And again. And again.”
Divers eventually came and retrieved the body. Flavia was pronounced dead on the shore.
“We are saddened to confirm the death of a race participant during the swim portion of today’s IRONMAN Texas triathlon,” Ironman Texas said in a statement. “We send our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of the athlete and will offer them our support as they go through this very difficult time. Our gratitude goes out to the first responders for their assistance.”
SwimSwam photographer Jack Spitser was in attendance and said the water was “gross” and not helping was that swimmers weren’t allowed to wear wetsuits, which made it harder to be buoyant.
Wetsuits aren’t allowed if the water temperature is above 76.1 degrees, and race officials reported the temperature was 77 degrees on race day.
Spitser said the water was “murky” and that “you couldn’t see more than a foot in front of you underwater.”
“So the visibility was basically nonexistent, which made it super difficult to search once she went under,” he said.
A fitness influencer with over 60,000 Instagram followers, Flavia was an experienced triathlete, having contested multiple Ironman and Ironman 70.3 events, including Ironman Texas in 2023 and the World Championships in Kona later that year.
She is the ninth person to have died during an Ironman-branded event in the last 12 months, all of which came during the swim.
A study conducted in 2017 by the Minneapolis Heart Institute Federation found that deaths and cardiac arrests struck 1.74 out of every 100,000 triathlon competitors, with a majority of the deaths occurring in the swim portion.
“During this portion of the race, the athletes likely experience an adrenaline surge as they enter the water and are competing in close proximity to other athletes, and in some cases with environmental conditions that are difficult to prepare for,” said Dr. Kevin Harris, the lead study author.
Other factors, such as cold water shock, dunking and the increased difficulty of identifying someone in the water who is in danger, can also pose problems for triathletes during the swim.
Because of the increased risks the swimming portion of triathlons can cause, more triathlon organizers have gone to staggered starts to reduce the number of swimmers in one particular area.
My condolences, this is terrible.
Even though it’s not likely, I hope no more deaths or injuries occur.
I’m curious if requiring safe swimmer buoys would help,(wouldn’t eliminate deaths but help).
This would help with buoyancy of someone (while not keeping them fully afloat) and help find someone quicker that goes under easier.
RIP Mara Flavia.
A tragic and traumatic experience for everybody around her.
I have no knowledge of Flavia’s swimming, so this comment is not related to her situation, but to swimming in Ironman/70.3 more generally.
I am constantly surprised by the number of triathletes who take their training seriously, but are completely freaked out by swim conditions that are less than perfect, busy fields, swimming non-wetsuit, and close contact swimming. All three are going to be part of triathlon, whether it is sprint, Olympic, or Ironman distance. To me it seems crucial to be ready and confident to deal with the hurly-burly at the start of the event. It can be rough, there’s a lot of stimuli,… Read more »
My teen described the swim with multiple kicks and being pulled under at the start, she couldn’t believe how bad it was and she was at the front and a seasoned swimmer.
I was shocked when it happened to me too and I’d been warned to expect it.
That does sound bad. I’m sorry to hear it.
While there will be, inevitably, contact, I don’t understand why so many people actively interfere with others, especially pulling, at the start of a long swim. Sheesh, they just need to focus on themselves.
i remember one swimmer who kept grabbing my ankles and pulling me backwards. Luckily I beat her, and have a photo on the award stand to remember her by! People play dirty out there.
R.I.P. Flavia Flav
I read somewhere that she had the flu either immediately before the race or at race time. Maybe that was a contributing factor? Regardless, it was a real tragedy.
Did they release a cause of death? Is it possible a gator pulled her under?
no words… what a loss. As others have said…. so many drownings now in the Triathlon/Crossfit sphere and we need change.
Any change will only lead to cancellation of competitions. Organizers simply won’t be able to find additional money to fund the competitions. The only change that won’t lead to that is warnings about cardiac arrests to the competitors.
The trainer I work with was a former borderline pro Ironman athlete. Like he could’ve gotten a pro card but not made a living. Guy is an aerobic machine.
We were talking about this yesterday and how they’ve already changed things to make them safer.
I wondered about having an in water start so there’s less “shock.” He didn’t think that would fix it because the dunking and stress are the major contributing factors.
I don’t know what the fix is really beyond what they’ve done…Ironmans aren’t normal ya know?
They need mandatory warm-up areas and perhaps it is a “swim” of sorts to an in-water start corral. Standing around on shore for 30 minutes and then run and jump into cold water and a constricting wetsuit does things to your heart. This woman was strong, recently going 11:xx at Lake Placid, and by all accounts it was a medical that she succumbed to.
This is madness: “She is the ninth person to have died during an Ironman-branded event in the last 12 months, all of which came during the swim.”
At the Cross-fit games last year (also coincidentally in TX): https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/crossfit-death-lazar-dukic-1235357644/.
Seems like reforms are necessary.
It’s an issue with the culture of their sport below elite levels.
I operate a pool where a group of masters iron man competitors train.
They were all slower than 7 min on 400 frees (participated at local swim clubs club night) and swam maybe 1-2 hours per week. If I was responsible for their safety doing an open water swim I’d be terrified.
It’s not even really their fault, as it’s the least important part of the event competitively, but it’s the highest risk part from a safety perspective.
There’s been swimmers who suffered heart attacks in the pool too either in or out of competition. Is that a “problem with the culture of their sport below elite level”? Medical emergencies can strike all ages and levels of athletes or non athletes. Anywhere or anytime. An Ironman swim contains several thousand athletes so the odds of one of them having a medical emergency are not astronomical.
But the point is that the likelihood of someone dying in the swim portion of the triathlon is almost twice as high than running a marathon (https://columbiachronicle.com/sports/f9243185-a5f5-552c-8e53-1a84bf654982/). I think that doing a 2.4 mile swim in difficult conditions for someone who is not a good swimmer will tend to stress their cardiovascular system to a degree that might cause a medical emergency.
Then why isn’t it happening on the run or the bike, especially considering those are exponentially longer legs than the swim?
The primary reason is that because if someone has a heart attack on the run or the bike, everyone sees it and immediate lifesaving actions can be taken. As Jack described here, they tried to rescue her immediately, then the rescuer had to come up for air, and by the time he went back down, he couldn’t find her in the murky water.
There’s also something to the stress of the start of the race and the physical contact in the swim.
Even if immediate lifesaving actions can be taken with the other two legs in the event of a heart attack, you hear about them happening much less frequently.
Maybe when it comes to swimming, there’s something that affects the body more acutely. These are otherwise cardiovascularly fit people. I know they warn people with high blood pressure against sudden exposure to cold water for that reason.
9 people have died in iron-man branded events in the last 12 months, all during the swim. As per the article.
If 9 people had died in x swimming body events in past 12 months and I was on this website defending it as something inevitable due to numbers (like you are) I would absolutely consider it indicative of a problem with the culture of the sport.
You don’t know the cause of death of the triathletes. You make the assumption they are all weak or slow swimmers. It is an ignorant assumption. Some triathletes are strong swimmers but just slow. Being slow by pool standards doesn’t make you weak. It just means you’re not fast. Fast triathlete swimmers with a competitive swim background have also died in these swims due to natural causes.
I don’t know why the downvotes, because this is facts.
Slow swimmers are not strong swimmers.
They may be strong, but if they’re slow in the water they are not ‘strong swimmers’…
McDonald’s account is gut-wrenching.
100% when he was describing diving down over and over it broke my heart. It’s NOT their fault, but they would still be feeling so much guilt they couldn’t bring her back up straight away.