Monday’s ABC Four Corners episode looked at the life and death of Nick Lowden, who at 23 was the youngest footballer to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE affects participants in collision and combat sports – having been first identified in boxers nearly a century ago – as well as soldiers and domestic violence victims. “Why am I like this?” Lowden asked his mother. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my brain?”
The worst of these stories end up in the flat, neutral tone of coroner’s reports. In 408 subheadings, John Cain’s inquest into the death of Shane Tuck documented what CTE does to the brain, the lives of athletes and their loved ones. The Tuck and Lowden families spoke of young men who didn’t understand what was happening to them, who drew on their athlete’s instinct to fight, and who eventually retreated. Nothing I have read about a footballer has been so crushing as Cain’s detached description of the final 24 hours of Tuck’s life.
