Have any Olympic athletes died at a games while performing their
event? If not, what is the worst injury sustained by an athlete?

This question was inspired by the day's crashes on the ski hills.

---

Request for Question Clarification by rainbow-ga on 13 Feb 2006 13:25 PST

Hi richardmtl,

Does this answer your question?

Knut Jensen - Olympic cyclist
"1960 --- fractured skull during the 1960 Olympics in Rome. In the 93
degree heat, he collapsed from sunstroke and hit his head. He was one
of only 2 athletes to die as a result of Olympic competition.
(Francisco Lazaro was the other.)"
Celebrity Trivia Collection: Unusual Celebrity Deaths
http://www.corsinet.com/trivia/3-triv.html

Looking forward to your clarification.

Best regards,
Rainbow

Dear richardmtl-ga;

Thank you for allowing me to answer your interesting question.
Technically there have been 2 die while engaged in actual Olympic
competition, but there have been four deaths while performing their
specific event if you also include the two deaths that occurred in
practice. You will note that there is some discrepancy about the cause
of death in the case of Jensen. While he did apparently sustain a
fractured skull as a direct result of his fall it has also been
generally reported that the collapse which resulted in his injuries
came about as a result of his alleged misuse of controlled substances:

?According to Olympics historian David Wallechinsky, four athletes
have died during the Olympics -two during competitions, two during
practices. The two in-competition deaths happened during Summer Games:

In 1912, Portuguese marathon runner Francisco Lazaro, 21, collapsed
from sunstroke and heart trouble and died the next day.

In 1960, Danish cyclist Knut Jensen died during the Olympic road race
as a result of ingesting amphetamines and nicotinyl tartrate, supposed
performance boosters.

As for the winter accidents, both happened during the 1964 Innsbruck
Olympics: Australian downhill racer Ross Milne, 19, was killed when he
flew off the course during a training run and slammed into a tree.

Polish-born British luger -Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski was killed during
a trial run on the Olympic course two weeks before the Games began.

That was the same Olympics in which luge made its Olympic debut, and
critics had lobbied against including it on the Olympic slate,
claiming it was too dangerous.?
THE CINCINNATI POST
http://www.cincypost.com/sports/oly2002/danger020802.html


I hope you find that my answer exceeds your expectations. If you have
any questions about my research please post a clarification request
prior to rating the answer. Otherwise I welcome your rating and your
final comments and I look forward to working with you again in the
near future. Thank you for bringing your question to us.

Best regards;
Tutuzdad-ga ? Google Answers Researcher



INFORMATION SOURCES

Defined above


SEARCH STRATEGY


SEARCH ENGINE USED:

Google ://www.google.com


SEARCH TERMS USED:

Died

Olympics

Thanks for the excellent response. It's sad to see athletes' dreams
die when they crash or fall (look at Perdita Felicien in Athens, amond
myriad examples), which is why i hate watching figure skating, but it
must be horrible to be seriously injured at what is supposed to be the
pinnacle of your career.

In case people are curious, any notable injuries worth mentioning?  Thanks!

Remember Sergei Grinkov, the Russian twice-gold-medalist pairs figure
skater who died of a massive heart attack in 1995 during training.
'Twasn't an Olympic death, however (he was practicing for a Stars on
Ice performance, having won the gold at the 1994 Lillehammer
Olympics). He died in Lake Placid, NY, 28 years old.

Sources: Fansite <http://www.gg-corner.de/profiles.htm>, Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Grinkov>