Olympic Cycling Silver medalist Kelly Catlin is no more @ 23 !

Election schedules have been announced ~ WE must exercise our franchise and use it judiciously too .. .. .. in our Country, some see Cinema as a passport to politics – even smalltime actors think of becoming big in politics; by their acting a few roles in cinema, they start talking about Economics, Science, Astrophysics and what not ! .. .. IPL is about to start – and sooner we could have some young star springing up from now where – in USA and many other foreign countries, achievers in other sports too gain stardom .. .. Olympics is the biggest sporting event.

The cycling competitions of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were held at four venues scheduled to host 18  events between 6 August and 21 August. Cycling competitions had been contested in every Summer Olympics programme since the first modern Olympiad in 1896 alongside athletics, artistic gymnastics, fencing and swimming. The women's cycling team pursuit at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro took place at the Rio Olympic Velodrome on 11 and 13 August. Great Britain have a strangle hold and are  yet to be beaten in this event.  Silver medal was won by US team.

Stanford University has long been known as one of the world's leading centres for innovation and a breeding ground for the entrepreneurs who created, and continue to shape, Silicon Valley.  William Hewlett and David Packard, founders of what is now the world's leading PC manufacturer, met as Stanford undergraduates in the 1930s. Subsequent Stanford alumni include the founders or co-founders of Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Intel, Yahoo, Netflix, PayPal, Electronic Arts, LinkedIn, YouTube and Mozilla Firefox. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are Stanford alumni and so is one in 20 Google employees.

Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford University) is an American private research university in Stanford, California. Stanford is known for its academic strength, wealth, proximity to Silicon Valley, and ranking as one of the world's top universities.  The university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was a U.S. Senator and former Governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon.  As of Oct 2018, 83 Nobel laureates, 27 Turing Award laureates, and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, faculty or staff.  Now it is in news for wrong reasons .. .. ..  first report stated that an   unnamed graduate student died on Thursday night, the University announced on Friday. The deceased master’s student in Computational and Mathematical Engineering was discovered in their on-campus residence by their roommate.  She is a famous medal winning cyclist.

Kelly Catlin, a current USA Cycling national team member, won the silver medal in women's team pursuit at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  Outside of cycling, Catlin was a graduate of the University of Minnesota with degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Chinese, and was enrolled for studies towards a graduate degree in Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University.  The news is - three-time world champion and Olympic silver medallist Kelly Catlin has died aged 23, USA Cycling has confirmed. Catlin won three straight team pursuit world titles on the track from 2016 to 2018, claiming silver in the same event at the Rio 2016 Games.

"We are deeply saddened by Kelly's passing," said USA Cycling president and chief executive.  "We will all miss her dearly. Kelly was more than an athlete to us and she will always be part of the USA Cycling family. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the Catlin family. This is an incredibly difficult time and we want to respect their privacy. The cause of death is unknown, but in email sent to Stanford students, according to the Stanford Daily, the university's vice provost for student affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole said "there is no indication of foul play".

Some reports put the death to be a case of suicide.  Catlin was studying for a graduate degree in computational and mathematical engineering at Stanford, after competing an undergraduate degree in mathematics and Chinese. She was also a talented violinist and artist. Last month on Velo News, Catlin wrote about balancing her athletic and academic career. “Being a graduate student, track cyclist, and professional road cyclist can instead feel like I need to time-travel to get everything done. And things still slip through the cracks,” she wrote. “This is probably the point when you’ll expect me to say something cliché like, ‘Time management is everything.’ Or perhaps you’re expecting a nice, encouraging slogan like, ‘Being a student only makes me a better athlete!’ After all, I somehow make everything work, right? Sure. Yeah, that’s somewhat accurate. “But the truth is that most of the time, I don’t make everything work.”

Sad, at 23, she chose to end her life .. ..

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

11^th Mar 2019.