Sportswriter Grant Wahl Died In Qatar Of An Aortic Aneurysm

Sportswriter Grant Wahl, 49, died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, his wife Dr. Celine Gounder announced to CBS News on Wednesday.

Wahl's wife Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at New York University, said that the New York City Medical Examiner's office performed the autopsy, according to USA Today.

“It’s just one of those things that had been likely brewing for years,” Gounder said to "CBS Mornings" co-host Gayle King in her first interview since Wahl's death. "And for whatever reason it happened at this point in time."

Wahl died Saturday while covering the Argentina and Netherlands World Cup quarterfinal match in Qatar.

Tim Scanlan, Wahl's agent mentioned the soccer journalist "appeared to have suffered some sort of acute distress in the press room" of Lusail Stadium during the quarterfinal match, when the two teams began playing in extra time. Paramedics were called to the scene, but were unable to revive him, according to Scanlan.

The Qatari government released a statement Dec. 10 expressing “We are deeply saddened by the death of the U.S. journalist Grant Wahl,” mentioned a spokesperson for the Qatari Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy. The statement according to a BizPacReview report asserted “He received immediate emergency medical treatment on-site, which continued as he was transferred by ambulance to Hamad General Hospital.”

Wahl began his journalism career with Sports Illustrated in 1996 as a fact checker, and wrote hundreds of articles on a variety of sports for the magazine for over twenty years, according to the New York Times. The prolific journalist was best known for writing about soccer, which he began covering while he was a student reporter at Princeton University in the early 1990s.

Wahl was covering his eighth World Cup.