The pathologist who performed the autopsy on...

The pathologist who performed the autopsy on volleyball star Flo Hyman says in a Sports Illustrated story this week that the 6-5 athlete died from a fatal symptom found in victims of Marfan’s syndrome, a dime-sized weak spot in the aorta, the main artery of the body.

Hyman, a standout on the U.S. women’s volleyball team in the 1984 Olympics, collapsed and died Jan. 24 during a match in Japan. She was 31.

Dr. Victor Rosen told the magazine that he found the weak spot about an inch above Hyman’s heart, that it had been there since birth and that the artery had burst.

Said Dr. Reed Pyeritz, director of the Medical Genetics Clinic at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore and an expert on the disorder: “Often the first person to make the diagnosis of Marfan’s is the coroner.”