Last week, we wrote about Cheadle Lacrosse Club’s Joe McEwan who has been walking the length of New Zealand over the past four months in support of Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY) after suffering a cardiac arrest while playing lacrosse in September 2023.
Joe appeared on the latest episode of Gabby Logan and Kelly Cates’ The Sports Agents podcast to continue raising awareness of his condition and CRY’s heart screening for those aged 14 to 35.
Kelly Cates: Joe McEwan, who suffered a sudden cardiac arrest playing lacrosse aged 22, joined us as he walks the length of New Zealand to raise money for heart screenings.
Joe McEwan: Basically, the circumstances couldn’t have been better for me to survive unless I was in a hospital itself. So, it was any normal day for me, I was going to a lacrosse tournament. I was playing and someone took a shot and the ball hit me in the back of the neck and that triggered a cardiac arrest. As I say, I got ridiculously lucky, the referee was a firefighter. It was a big tournament as well, I think maybe three or four doctors spectating, two defibrillators on site, ambulance came within three minutes, air ambulance came within 10 I think. So even though it was a really scary thing to happen - I think, I was in a coma for a few hours - by the time I was at hospital, they knew I’d be fine.
Kelly Cates: It’s such an extraordinary situation to be in and when I’ve heard other people talk about recovering from a cardiac arrest and particularly when you hear sportsmen talk about it for everybody around you - what I think [ex-footballer] David Ginola said, “I don’t know because I didn’t see it happen, I wasn’t there really”.
Joe McEwan: So this is the thing when I tell people about the collapse, they’re always like “oh that must have been absolutely terrible” and I’m like well not really. I feel like the hard part is surviving it. But I don’t remember any of it. When people ask me about it I always say it was so much harder for my parents because they’re the ones who had to go through getting the call that their son had collapsed. They were in a different country when they got the call and my brother was down in London and they all thought for a good hour or so that that was it that I’d be gone. For me, I just woke up in hospital and they told me you’ve had a cardiac arrest. I was like oh well that’s not great is it?
Gabby Logan: Because of course you had no prior warning of the condition that you’re now managing and a lot of young people especially under the age of 35 who are fit and well and playing sport wouldn’t think to even go and get their hearts checked because they don’t associate their healthy lifestyles with a cardiac condition. Every week in the UK 12 people under the age of 35 die because of an undiagnosed cardiac condition which is 624 people every year so it’s not an insignificant number of young people who just seem to be at the start of great lives and active lives as well. So what you’re doing is not just raising money, you’re raising awareness about more screening that potentially could save lives especially for young active people. Had you ever been offered any kind of screening through your sporting life?
Joe McEwan: No, so the only time that I’d heard about things like this happening is what everybody heard like Christian Eriksen, Fabrice Muamba, things like that. It sounds stupid but it’s true like you never expect it to be able to happen to you until it happens to you. The tragic thing is once it has happened to you the likelihood is that you won’t survive it and the odds of surviving an out of hospital cardiac arrest are like 7%. It is definitely something that there should be wider knowledge of and it should be more widely accepted to get heart screenings in like schools ideally.
Gabby Logan: I think what’s changed since my brother died of a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in 1992 when he was 15 and what’s changed since then – he was a very high level performing athlete, he was a footballer and he’d signed for Leeds United – is that young athletes of his calibre now are offered screenings. My son was in the rugby academy systems at Wasps and we had a letter home to say that he was going to be screened when he was 16 which was quite a moment for us as a family because you realise that something has changed at least for high performing young sports people. If you’re in a system of professional sport that is often now offered but obviously not if you’re more recreationally involved in sport so what CRY are doing as I understand is offering subsidised ECGs and screening to young people between 14 and 35 and I think Kelly as a mum of young people who play sport when you hear stories like Joe’s it makes you realise that something really simple, like it’s not an MRI it’s a really simple screening that can help to identify potential issues, you’d take it up wouldn’t you?
Kelly Cates: Absolutely and Joe as you said it’s just a series of circumstances that mean that you’re here and that you’re able to raise money for CRY at the moment and it’s about trying to reduce all those elements that could lead to a worse outcome.
Gabby Logan: Has it changed your outlook on life at all going through this?
Joe McEwan: Oh 100%. I’ve had a few people commenting on my social media saying “oh is this a good idea you’re doing this?” and to be honest I feel more capable than before I had the cardiac arrest! I feel incredibly healthy and it’s definitely given me a new outlook on life and it’s revealed to me that I have a lot more will-power than I thought I had.
Gabby Logan: I think that’s the thing as well Joe that a lot of people, when my brother died we tried to console ourselves thinking that well if you told him he couldn’t play football again he would have thought that wasn’t a life worth living, you know, if he’d been told about his condition in the weeks before. But actually I’ve met young footballers since who’ve been screened and found they had a condition and have gone on to play professional football and gone on to play professional sport and Christian Eriksen has proved that you can come back from something like that and keep playing professional sports and so what you’re proving and what Christian’s proved is that there is a life that you can live with as Kelly pointed out those things inside you whether it’s a monitor whether it’s a defibrillator and obviously the screening that continues to go on around your life. I think that’s really important to show young people that it’s not that you’re going to have to stop everything if something is found, life goes on and you can live a really great full active life.
Yesterday, after 130 days of walking, Joe finally completed his trek from the northern-most tip of the north island of New Zealand to the southern-most tip of the south island. He has so far raised over £8,500 and you can still donate to his cause by clicking the DONATE bitterns above or below.
To listen to the full episode of The Sports Agents podcast featuring Joe McEwan, click HERE.
