website statistics
Jump to content
  • Register/Login on Totallympics!

    Sign up to Totallympics to get full access to our website.

     

    Registration is free and allows you to participate in our community. You will then be able to reply to threads and access all pages.

     

    If you encounter any issues in the registration process, please send us a message in the Contact Us page.

     

    We are excited to see you on Totallympics, the home of Olympic Sports!

     

Athletes Deaths Thread


Dragon

Recommended Posts

Deaths of Olympians in June.

 

:USA Rod Larrieu, 83 - Athletics

:CZE Josef Smolka, 81 - Volleyball (1×B)

:AUS John Cuneo, 91 - Sailing (1×G)

:FIN Veli Lehtala, 84 - Rowing (2×B)

:HUN Istvan Kausz, 87 - Fencing (1×G)

:GBR Donald Macgregor, 81 - Athletics

:NED Pieter van der Kruk, 78 - Weightlifting 

:LUX Jean Link, 80 - Fencing

:USA Pete Rademacher, 91 - Boxing (1×G)

:USA Kurt Thomas, 64 - Gymnastics

:MAS Zambrose Abdul Rahman, 76 - Athletics

:HUN Peter Marot, 75 - Fencing (1×S, 1xB)

:HUN Odon Foldessy, 90 - Athletics (1×B)

:CAN Cy Strulovitch, 74 - Basketball

:GER Hermann Salomon, 82 - Athletics

:USA Jim Grelle, 83 - Athletics

:CAN Phil Takahashi, 63 - Judo

:ETH Seife Makonnen, 68 - Boxing

:CHI Juan Diaz, 84 - Boxing

:BRA Marinho (aka Mario Jose dos Reis Emiliano), 63 - Football

:BEL Ronny Van Sweevelt, 57 - Cycling

:CHI Marlene Ahrens, 86 - Athletics (1×S)

:HUN Gyorgy Karpati, 84 - Water Polo (3×G, 1×B)

:HUN Tibor Benedek, 47 - Water Polo (3×G)

:BEL Milo Sarens, 82 - Boxing

:HUN Endre Lepold, 64 - Athletics

:FRA Noel Vandernotte, 96 - Rowing (2×B)

:ANG Pedro Lima, 47 - Swimming

:SRB Bobana Velickovic, 30 - Shooting

:AUS Manny Santos, 85 - Weightlifting

:IRQ Ahmed Radhi, 56 - Football

:HUN Richard Bicskey, 83 - Cycling

:USA Dick Buerkle, 72 - Athletics

:POL Witold Baran, 80 - Athletics

:TUR Yebhi Akdag, 71 - Wrestling (1×S)

:IRQ Mohammed Yaseen Mohammed, 57 - Weightlifting

:CHI Juan Ostoic, 89 - Basketball

:URS Ivan Utrobin, 86 - Cross-country Skiing (1×B)

:SVK Marian Cisovsky, 40 - Football

:URS Aleksandr Kabanov, 72 - Water Polo (2×G)

 

And three late reported deaths from May.

 

:GBR Sidney Cross, 94 - Athletics

:POL Jozef Grzesiak, 79 - Boxing (1×B)

:HUN Karoly Wieland, 86 - Canoeing (1×B)

 

The total number of former Olympians who passed away in June was 40, just short of this year's high of 42 seen in April.

 

This included six Olympic champions with the sport of water polo hit particularly hard. Two triple gold medallists from Hungary Gyorgy Karpati and Tibor Benedek died within a day of each other. They were from two different generations but both contributed hugely to their country's domination of this sport since the 1930s. Aleksandr Kabanov of the former Soviet Union had an equally distinguished career in the sport winning two gold medals as a competitor before coaching Russia to consecutive titles in Sydney and Athens.

 

In a sad month for Hungary they lost a third Olympic champion with the death of fencer Istvan Kausz who won a gold in the team epee in Tokyo in 1964. Pete Rademacher of the USA was the Olympic heavyweight boxing champion in Melbourne in 1956. Finally, at Munich in 1972 John Cuneo of Australia won a gold medal in sailing's three man Dragon class.

 

Noel Vandernotte of France was one of the few remaining pre-WW11 Olympians at the time of his death. As a 12 year old he coxed both the pair and the four to bronze medals at the 1936 rowing regatta. Marlene Ahrens won a silver medal in the javelin in Melbourne in 1956 and remains the only Chilean woman to win an Olympic medal.

 

Pieter van der Kruk of the Netherlands was a national champion in both weightlifting and shot putting. In an unusual occurrence he qualified for the 1968 Olympics in both sports but ultimately decided that he would concentrate on weightlifting.

 

Lastly it it is particularly sad to note the death of Bobana Velickovic of Serbia who becomes the fourth competitor from Rio to leave us this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
https://totallympics.com/forums/topic/811-athletes-deaths-thread/page/35/#findComment-306764
Share on other sites

Damn, I had completely missed the death of Piet van der Kruk :yikes: 

 

The last Dutch Olympic weightlifter (no, I'm not counting Youth Olympics here) and until 2016 the Dutch weightlifting commentator for Eurosport. I always had mixed feelings about that: technically he was very good and absolutely knew what he was talking about, but he didn't know the athletes...at all. Like, basic facts about them. For a total non-weightlifting country though, he was good as a commentator.

.

Link to comment
https://totallympics.com/forums/topic/811-athletes-deaths-thread/page/35/#findComment-306771
Share on other sites

Non-Olympic, but Sir Everton Weekes one of Barbados and the West Indies greatest ever players has died at the age of 95. Together with Sir Frank Worrell and Sir Clyde Walcott they were known simply as the "Three Ws" from the 1950s onwards. Weekes is the only man to have scored five consecutive test centuries in the 143 years of test cricket.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/53258007

Link to comment
https://totallympics.com/forums/topic/811-athletes-deaths-thread/page/35/#findComment-306811
Share on other sites

An aspiring Olympic athlete who was driven to suicide by the abuse of her coaches. Sadly this sort of thing is not uncommon in sport

 

https://gulfnews.com/sport/south-korean-triathlete-choi-suk-hyeon-kills-herself-after-coaching-abuse-reports-1.1593661125879

Link to comment
https://totallympics.com/forums/topic/811-athletes-deaths-thread/page/35/#findComment-306828
Share on other sites

Gary Longhi. Canadian Paralympian. Competed in road cycling at four Paralympics from 1988 to 2000 winning gold and bronze in 1996 and silver in 1992. Flag bearer for Canada at the 2000 Paralympics. Age 56 years old.

 

Gary Longhi, Canada's flag-bearer at 2000 Paralympics, dies at 56 | CBC Sports

 

 

Link to comment
https://totallympics.com/forums/topic/811-athletes-deaths-thread/page/35/#findComment-307288
Share on other sites

Link to comment
https://totallympics.com/forums/topic/811-athletes-deaths-thread/page/35/#findComment-307386
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Grassmarket said:

:AUS Snowboard Cross rider Alex Pullen killed in diving accident.  Triple Olympian, twice World Champion.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-53331227

What a loss :cry:

 

I grew up watching him at the X Games and the Olympics. This is the hardest I’ve been affected by an athlete death in a while. I vividly remember cheering for him on multiple occasions. He wasn’t an athlete I follow in-depth or on social media, but he was someone I always pulled for the big contests. This has just been the worst year for the Olympic movement.

“Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair” - Nelson Mandela

Link to comment
https://totallympics.com/forums/topic/811-athletes-deaths-thread/page/35/#findComment-307387
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Latest Posts around Totallympics

    • Yep, the amount of emergency services I heard at some point was a little extreme (for our little town), so I checked what was going on and saw they were all being called to a specific location. Until then I thought maybe it was part of a parade of trucks and agricultural vehicles that was on it's way from the next town over, decorated with lights and stuff.   Since I knew it was on the parade route, I was sure one of those big vehicles had hit people somehow (there were, besides the many vehicles, also two helicopters on the way, meaning it certainly wasn't about a single victim).   We picked our bikes and went to take a look, absolutely chaos in the area. Never saw so many services combined together, fire trucks from 20km away, ambulance after ambulance came racing by, people frantically trying to make way for them (the roads weren't really closed yet).   While there we heard someone who had been close say that the parade hadn't arrived yet and what seemed to have happened was that a car from the other side came onto the roundabout and simply never turned. "It's a massive drama over there, unbelievable", he said.   Quite quickly rumours started spreading of course, the first one turned out to be true: a middle aged (local) woman was behind the wheel and seems to have become unwell. Local security camera showed the car going at high speed right before the roundabout.   Plenty of rumours going around in terms of who were involved of course, and people keeping each other up to date to see if they know this or that family and such...   Never expected my little town to be big news in the Netherlands, even including some breaking broadcasts, live reporters and everything, damn. By far the biggest thing to happen here in my memory  
    • This is the home town of our very own @heywooduand @brunamoura    
    • For me, these were very good Olympics, and British sport benefited greatly from them, and is still benefiting. I fear it will be much worse here. Canada also benefited very good on Vancouver 2010 – this is very good see in the medal standings of subsequent Winter Games after 2010 and earlier.
    • Nobody hates Britain more than the British media so… I recall it being quite a pessimistic tone before the London games started.
    • I'm curious what was written before London 2012? Did they attack their own country, or did they just keep quiet?
    • Other winners at the PanAm Sports Awards Junior 2025            
    • Very true point.  Although I think at this point everyone is just holding their collective breath until the test event.  The NHL isn't going to rage anymore until then because it's not like that would make the arena progress go any quicker
    • ROBERTO BONILLA - SWIMMING       
    • You look like an objective man, so I will ask you: which beer is better? Polish or Czech?
×
×
  • Create New...