Fijian rugby player Saimoni Vunilagi has died of suspected heat stroke after a training session in Japan. He was 26.<\/p>\n
His death was announced on Saturday by his team, Kyushu Electric Power Kyuden Voltex \u2014 known as Kyushu KV.<\/p>\n
The Japanese second-division club said Vunilagi died on Friday after falling ill on Monday and being hospitalised.<\/p>\n
“After team practice on Monday \u2026 Saimoni displayed symptoms consistent with severe heat stroke,” the team said in a statement Saturday.<\/p>\n
“He was transported to a medical facility for treatment, but despite the best efforts of the medical team, he sadly passed away.”<\/p>\n
Kyushu KV is based in Fukuoka, a city in southwestern Japan. Temperatures there reportedly reached around 35C on Monday.<\/p>\n
“The players, staff, and all team associates are devastated by this sudden news,” the team said.<\/p>\n
Back rower Vunilagi joined Kyushu KV last month, having previously played in the Japanese top flight with Tokyo Sungoliath.<\/p>\n
“Although Saimoni had only recently joined Kyushu KV, his generous spirit and powerful style of play had raised high hopes for his contributions in the upcoming season,” Kyushu KV added.<\/p>\n
“We humbly pray for the repose of his soul and extend our heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family.”<\/p>\n
The club supplied no other details surrounding the death.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fijian rugby player Saimoni Vunilagi has died of suspected heat stroke after a training session in Japan. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,1300,51672,237649,941,760,419458,85],"class_list":["post-848540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-death","tag-heat-stroke","tag-heatstroke","tag-japan","tag-rugby","tag-saimoni-vunilagi","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}