Lara van Ruijven, a world champion short track speed skater from the Netherlands, died Friday following complications from an autoimmune disorder, according a branch of the Dutch Olympic Committee and the Dutch skating federation. She was 27.
Van Ruijven was admitted to a hospital on June 25 after feeling ill at a training camp in the French Pyrenees. Since June 29, she was in an intensive care unit, where she was in a coma. She experienced internal bleeding, including in her brain, and underwent multiple surgeries, according to Dutch press releases.
“It’s incomprehensible that she has been taken from us while in the prime of her life,” Dutch skating director Herman de Haan said in a release, according to an Associated Press translation.
Van Ruijven is the reigning world champion at 500m. She earned bronze at the PyeongChang Olympics as part of the 3000m relay.
