Sport blighted by tragedies
The death of Thai billionaire and Leicester City football club owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha in a helicopter crash last Saturday has shocked fans, but it is not the first air accident in sport. Here are eight other aviation disasters to hit the sports world.
en route to play Senegal in a World Cup qualifier, killing all 25 on board. The team was recognised as one of the strongest fielded by the African nation, having thrashed Italy 4-0 at the 1988 Olympic Games. A report into the crash, issued a decade later, blamed pilot error and an engine problem. Rocky Marciano
American boxing legend Rocky Marciano was killed when his jet crashed into a tree as it was coming in to land in the US state of Iowa on August 31, 1969. Marciano, 45 when he died, was world heavyweight champion between 1952 and 1956 and retired undefeated with a 49-0 record. Uruguayan rugby team Russian ice hockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crashed due to pilot error after taking off for their first game of the 2011/2012 season in the Belarus capital of Minsk. All the players were killed. similarities to the Leicester crash, Matthew Harding, vice-chairman of Premier League football club Chelsea, died on October 22, 1996 when his helicopter came down in poor weather as he returned from a League Cup win against Bolton Wanderers. Like Vichai, the popular Harding was known for his largesse and ploughed millions of pounds into the club. Chapecoense (below)
A plane carrying Brazil’s Chapecoense football team ran out of fuel and crashed in the Andes near Medellin, Colombia, on November 28, 2016.
Seventy-one of the 77 people on board were killed, including 16 of the 19 players. Chapecoense were en-route to play the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final against Colombia’s Atletico Nacional. –