Father 'broken' after son Dominic Hamlyn, 24, dies minutes after giving speech at younger brother's birthday party

Peter Hamlyn, the world-renowned brain surgeon, said he felt “broken” following the death of his Cambridge University graduate son who died after suffering a cardiac arrest while taking a swim at the outdoor pool of his family's £3.5million ($4.3 million) mansion in Kent on Sunday, July 28.

62-year-old Peter said that his "beautiful boy", Dominic Hamlyn, had delivered a 15-minute speech at his brother's 21st birthday party moments before "sinking to the bottom" of the swimming pool. 

"There is no mystery, there were no drugs," Peter was quoted as saying by the Mirror. "He was swimming in his swimming trunks, almost sober. He had just spoken for 15 minutes without notes. It was his youngest brother's 21st and shortly after giving a brilliant speech about him, Dominic went swimming with friends. He completed two lengths and then sank to the bottom. He was immediately pulled from the water and a medical student started performing CPR until I came a minute later to take over."

The father added that although they made every effort possible to save the young man, they failed. An ambulance arrived at the house "fast" and he was rushed to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent, where he was pronounced dead.

"Two consultants worked on him throughout the night," Peter said. "A specialist team came from St Thomas to put him on a bypass. He died last night despite all their efforts. There will be an inquest but he clearly had a heart attack - a brain scan ruled out a hemorrhage. Their brilliance at resuscitation is our only comfort." 

As to why the 24-year-old, who was always supportive of his father's career and hoped to be like him one day, passed away in such an unexpected way, Peter said that he had no answer to that.

"Why did he die? He was a superb athlete competing in both rugby and rowing at Cambridge. It is called Sudden Death in Athletes or sometimes Sudden Athlete Death - SAD. It is a rare often fatal cardiac syndrome. What the footballer had and survived. Not our beautiful, beautiful boy. We are broken. If he is to be remembered it is as a hero and one of the world's helpers," he said. 

Peter is famous for being the brilliant surgeon who nearly 30 years ago carried out life-saving operations on former Commonwealth middleweight boxing titleholder Michael Watson.

Dominic was his middle child who was a first-class graduate in astrophysics and proceeded to studied philosophy at a Masters level in Cambridge.

At the time of the unfortunate incident, Dominic, who ran for London's Marathon for Brain and Spine Foundation in the year 2014, was visiting his exquisite home in the tiny village of Crundale in Kent.