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https://apple.news/Auy_XPGWLT0KfRkRz7DTfvw Initial section:
Alena Kosinova was hunched over a fan waiting for her spray tan to dry when she realized she couldn’t move. It was hours before the 2021 Europa Pro contest and the Czech bodybuilder was cramping again — just like she had at a contest in Portugal weeks earlier.
Kosinova was known by friends and competitors for embracing the extremes of bodybuilding — the training, the dieting, the drugs. But on that steamy August morning, her voice quivered as she whispered to another Czech athlete, Ivana Dvorakova, “I won’t be able to do it. I feel really ill.”
Dvorakova helped lay her down on the concrete floor as others gathered and gave Kosinova water, packets of salt and sugar. Kosinova answered questions about the diuretics she had taken before convulsing and losing consciousness.
It took nearly an hour for the ambulance to arrive at the venue in Alicante, Spain, according to four people who witnessed or were briefed on what happened. Kosinova, a 46-year-old mother who dreamed of winning the prestigious Olympia, died before the competition was over.
Her American coach, Shelby Starnes, wasn’t there — he rarely attended shows. But shortly after Kosinova died, Starnes received an alarming email from another client, Jodie Engle.
The 30-year-old single mother wrote that she had been hospitalized and might need open-heart surgery. Doctors blamed the diuretics she said she’d been advised to use for more than a week leading into the NPC National Championships in Florida.
Engle won first place in her division and earned a “pro card,” allowing her to compete professionally. But the price she paid was steep: tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills and, doctors told her, she would eventually need a kidney transplant.
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