The images were of fire and smoke, of wreckage from terrifying, high-speed crashes. Everyone wanted an explanation. There were only investigations and heartbreak — from Las Vegas to the Volga River. Dan Wheldon, months after winning an improbable second title at the Indianapolis 500, died at 33 in an incendiary scene of carnage in the closing race of the IndyCar season.
The hockey club Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, one of the best in Russia and featuring former NHL players, plunged into a river bank after takeoff. All 37 players, coaches and staff died.
Sports lost a roster of greats in 2011: Joe Frazier in boxing, Duke Snider and Harmon Killebrew in baseball, Al Davis in football. Golf’s Seve Ballesteros and the marathon’s Grete Waitz never made it out of their 50s. But the deaths of Wheldon and the entire Lokomotiv team — athletes on the job and in their prime — stood out as both sudden and shocking. Wheldon was one of racing’s most popular drivers, an Englishman whose success never quite registered at home. And even though he had won Indy in 2005, he had trouble getting rides this season because sponsors were hard to come by. But there he was at the Brickyard in May, sailing to victory out of nowhere, the beneficiary of a rookie mistake by JR Hildebrand with one lap left. “You never know what’s going to happen,” Wheldon said. Less than five months later, his wisdom played out in the most chilling way possible. Wheldon was well behind the leaders at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but moving up. In an eye blink, he was caught in mayhem that would engulf nearly half the 34-car field. His car soared into the air and careened into a post in the fence surrounding the track. By year’s end, IndyCar said no one factor was responsible for the accident, calling it a “perfect storm” of events.
The Lokomotiv hockey team was on its way to Minsk for its opener in the Kontinental Hockey League. But before the chartered jet reached full altitude, it smashed alongside a river and burst into flames. It was one of the worst air disasters in sports history. Investigators cited lax oversight and insufficient crew training.
The memorial drew 100,000 people, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The crash also put a spotlight on the fear of travel throughout all sports. The basketball community at Oklahoma State needs no lessons on this. Kurt Budke, the 50-year-old women’s coach, and assistant Miranda Serna, 36, were making a recruiting trip when their small plane went down in Arkansas. Their deaths came not long after the 10th anniversary of a fatal crash involving the school’s men’s basketball team. Boxing suffered a big loss with the death of Frazier, 67, who spent his last days in hospice care with liver disease. Promoter Bob Arum called him a “great, great warrior.” Also gone from boxing was heavyweight Ron Lyle of Denver at age 70. He brawled with Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Frazier. “Ron was a good-hearted guy, but he could fight,” said Earnie Shavers, a hard-hitting fellow heavyweight who fought Lyle in 1975. “He was tough. He could take a good punch.”
