Prince pulls out of ironman

RIV · Feb 22, 2004

Peter McGough just posted this on Ironage.us

2004 IRONMAN PREJUDGING
Prince pulls out as Dexter Jackson pulls ahead of Lee Priest

Minutes before the 10.00.am prejudging start time, Tom Prince pulled out of the 2004 Ironman being staged at the Pasadena Civic Center in rain-sodden Southern California. Hospitalized by serious kidney malfunction last year (a story featured in the January '04 issue of FLEX) Prince had battled through his 12-week contest prep to arrive at Friday's weigh-in at a contest-ready and remarkable 276 pounds. However, overnight his lungs began to fill with fluid and finding it difficult to breath, he had to pull out of the contest and go for kidney dialysis at a local LA hospital. We'll have more updates on Prince's condition as the story develops.

At the contest itself, Dexter Jackson stood out as the clear leader, with Lee Priest (at 199 pounds) a solid second. Observing the callouts it seemed that Ahmad Haidar, Craig Titus and Gustavo Badell were battling for the third and final Olympia qualifying spot.

trunksy · Feb 23, 2004

Last month, an online buddy of mine in Hawaii had his last kidney malfunction after dealing with kidney cancer four and a half years ago. One day, we were chatting online and he said he was in pain and needed to go to the hospital. A few days later, he was dead because he couldn't get a donor fast enough so there wasn't anything they could do when his last kidney gave out. For some reason, they couldn't even do dialysis. Se la vie.

Best of luck to Tom Prince. I guess my friend who trains at Venice won't be seeing Tom at the gym for a while. I think he should retire. Playing "who's tougher? your willpower to compete or your kidneys" is not a game I think he wants to lose.

weight77 · Feb 23, 2004

There are some things going around (at some of the gossip boards) that he pulled out because he was holding to much water and there was nothing he could do to get it off fast enough. But I don't see why they would make up such a terrible story to cover for him holding water. I mean if he was holding water so what, what did people expect out of him. I am sure he will coment on this soon enough.