Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2010 February 13

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February 13

List of Olympic athletes who died during the Games

The above article does not exist under that title or, as far as I can fine, any other. Is the subject covered somewhere else on Wikipedia?

I can, of course, find current news reports containing such a list. --Anonymous, 07:47 UTC, February 13, 2010.

How many are there overall? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

This list is similar, though more broad. —Akrabbim^talk 16:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Five: Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in 2010, alpine skier Ross Milne and British luge slider Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, during training in 1964, Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen collapsed in 1960, Portuguese marathoner Francisco Lázaro in 1912. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 18:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

You missed Nicolas Bochatay. And I've wikilinked your post. —Akrabbim^talk 18:14, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes I did. I wrote six and then could only find five so I changed my answer. That increases my impression that this would be a good list to have in Wikipedia. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 00:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I may be picking nits but the luger didn't actually die during the games. The opening ceremonies weren't for another few hours. Dismas|^(talk) 20:17, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

He didn't die during his event, but there was some competition in at least one other event during the day prior to the official opening of the games. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec) It's fuzzy enough to qualify, imo. Some Olympic events have actually started before the Opening Ceremony, so the ceremony is not necessarily the strict delimiter it might appear to be. Kumaritashvili had travelled to the games venue in order to compete, he had presumably already taken up residence in the athletes' quarters, and his death occurred in the overall context of the games. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:44, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

There were also the 5(?) Israeli atheletes who died during the Munich Massacre in 1972. They didn't acually die while participating in their sports, though. Buddy431 (talk) 21:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd still include them. An athlete who dies in his bed of a heart attack, while at the Games, would be included; so why not athletes who were murdered while at the Games? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 23:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

The prospective article says "died during the Games", which would certainly count the Israelis (I think there were 7 of them). Regarding the opening ceremonies, the winter games, at least, have been conducting the start of competition before the opening ceremonies for quite awhile now. Not sure about the summer games, but you could really count anything that happened in connection with the Olympics that occurs at the Olympic city. The reasoning there is similar to what you said earlier - that they are there because they are going to be competing. Whether the actual competition has started is a nitpicking technicality. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:23, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Not really relevant to the discussion, but just for the record, the 11 Israeli Athletes killed in the Munich massacre were: Mark Slavin, Eliezer Halfin, David Berger, Ze'ev Friedman, Yossef Romano, Andre Spitzer, Moshe Weinberg, Amitzur Shapira, Yossef Gutfreund, Yakov Springer, and Kehat Shorr. השלום יהיה עליהם. -User:Avicennasis/sigsmall @ 09:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Not all of them were athletes participating in the games, though. Yossef Gutfreund, for example, was a wrestling judge, and several of those listed were coaches. If we're going to count anyone killed in the context of the olympics, then the list will surely expand considerably. Buddy431 (talk) 17:27, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

If memory serves, the football competition started before the opening ceremony of the Beijing games. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 00:37, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

If I was compiling such an article, I'd say it should include anyone who was either an athlete, an official, or a member of the athletes' support staff such as doctors and trainers, while at an Olympic venue for games-related purposes. However, I can't think of a sufficiently terse way to say that in order to propose it as an article title. "List of Olympic-related deaths" could be taken as including deaths while training in the person's home country, for example. --Anonymous, 20:21 UTC, February 14, 2010.

You could name it "List of Olympic related deaths" and then in the intro to the article, you could explain the breadth of the article and how it doesn't include training deaths before the athletes left their home countries. Dismas|^(talk) 03:22, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

What about the two people who died in the Atlanta bombing in 1996? Adam Bishop (talk) 08:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

They were spectators, weren't they? What about spectators who die of natural causes? They'd have no less claim to be included, but we don't know the details because their deaths never made it to the news. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:22, 16 February 2010 (UTC)