Gone But Not Forgotten

I recently read an article in Sports Illustrated about the Titanic and how there were two world class tennis players on the ship when it went down. Both of them survived in different manners and about three months later they faced each other in an exhilarating five set match. Karl Behr would defeat Dick Williams 0-6, 7-9, 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 at the Longwood Bowl in Boston. Williams would go one to be U.S. singles champion, be doubles champion at Wimbledon and at the 1924 Olympics won the mixed doubles gold medal. Behr would be a member of a number of Davis Cups teams and would eventually be on a winning Davis Cup team with Williams.

Dick Williams and Karl Behr

This got me thinking about the numerous transportation disasters in which members of sports teams or entire sports teams had perished what might have happened if they had survived.

On May 4th 1949 a plane carrying the entire Torino FC team crashed into a hillside as it was returning from Portugal after playing a friendly versus Benfica with 18 players, five club officials and the crew perished in the accident. Today Torino is known as the ‘other’ team in Turin next to Juventus and this season they won the Italian second division to get back to the Seria A. In 1949 they were the defending champions and were a star studded squad hoping to repeat as champions when the disaster happened. Three of the players did not make the trip, Sauro Toma was injured, legendary Hungarian László Kubala who was just recently reunited with his family after they fled communist Hungary stayed in Turin to be with his sick son, and Luigi Gioliano did not receive his passport in time. For the remaining four matches in that season Turino had their junior squad play the matches, in honor of the fallen the remaining four opponents also sent out their junior team to face Torino’s. Torino would win the final four matches and win the Seria A for the 5th time in the 1940s, this would be the last trophy the club would win until they won the league again in 1976.

On February 6th 1958 a flight made a third attempt at taking off from the Münich airport but was never actually able to lift off the ground and skidded off the runway into a fence and a house. Sitting on this flight to Manchester was the Manchester United football team who was flying back after a 3-3 tie against Red Star in Belgrade. Eight players and three staff members died in the crash. At that time Manchester United was coming off back to back titles and would end up making a run to the semifinals of the European Cup when they lost to eventual runner up AC Milan. Among the survivors was nine players among them Sir Bobby Charlton and team manager Matt Busby. Two of the players who survived suffered career ending injuries in the crash

On October 29th 1960 Cal Poly football team was planning on flying back to California after playing a game in Ohio against Bowling Green State University. This ended up being one of those situations where anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. The plain was a World War II aircraft that was taking off from the Toledo airport when it crashed, broke in two and caught fire. Twenty two of the 48 people on board died including sixteen players. At the time of takeoff the aircraft was about 2000 pounds over the max capacity, visibility was less than what was prohibited for a commercial plane at takeoff and there was partial power loss in one of the engines at takeoff. It was later found out that the pilot of the plane was flying with a suspended licence. After the crash Cal Poly cancelled their last three games of the season and would not play a game outside of California until 1969.

Laurence Owen

There has always been a debate about the Sports Illustrated jinx and if it really exists. The February 13th, 1961 Sports Illustrated cover featured Laurence Owen with the caption “America’s most exciting girl skater”. Two days later on the 15th a Boeing 707 crashed while circling the Brussels airport waiting to land. The plane crashed to the ground and caught fire as it hit the ground killing all 72 passengers which included Laurence Owen and the rest of the U.S. Figure Skating National team on their way to the world championships in Prague. The flight had a number of world champion hopefuls, the U.S. had dominated world figure skating in the 1950s and looked to continue at the 1961 world championships. The world championships were cancelled because of the tragedy. This crash wiped the U.S. skating program off the map. No American would win a major competition until the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble France.

1970 November 14th Marshall University’s football team was returning home from a defeat to East Carolina when the plane carrying 37 members of the team and a number of boosters crashed as it was making its final approach. The entire program was wiped out except for a couple of players and two coaches. The idea of disbanding the program altogether was brought up but a squad was put together for the 1971 season with players from the the JV team and athletes from other sports, some who had never played football in their life.

I am sure most of you remember remember when this past September 7th when Lokamotiv Yaroslav was flying to Minsk Belarus to kick off the KHL season against Dinamo Minsk. Apparently the weather conditions were not ideal and the plane did not reach a high enough altitude to clear a tower which it hit and caught fire. The team perished in the accident, among them were former NHL players Pavol Demitra, Ruslan Salei, Alexander Karpatsev, Igor Korolev and Brad McCrimmon.