A list of athletes that died during the Olympics

[mr.x]

Accidents simply happen, and lets face it they are much more prone during the Winter Games. These are EXTREME sports. You're sliding down an ice tube or hurling down a face of a mountain or even off a cliff/jump at god knows what speed wearing nothing but spandex. The athletes that participate in these sports know the risks.

Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, Georgia – Luge – 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Vancouver

Nicholas Bochatay, 27, Switzerland – Speed Skiing training – 1992 Winter Olympic Games, Albertville

Jorg Oberhammer, 47, Austrian Team Doctor – Ski Collision – 1988 Winter Olympic Games, Calgary

11 athletes, Munich 1972 Terrorist Attack

Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypecki, Britian – Luge – 1964 Winter Olympic Games, Innsbruck

Ross Milne, 19, Australia – Downhill Skiing – 1964 Winter Olympic Games, Innsbruck

Knut Jensen, Denmark – Cyclist – 1960 Summer Olympic Games, Rome

Francisco Lazaro, 21, Portugal – Runner – 1912 Summer Olympic Games, Stockholm

The potential for serious injury and death is substantially higher in Winter Olympic sports, where athletes hurl themselves off the faces of mountains and rocket down chutes carved out of unyielding ice.Alpine skiing, skeleton, bobsled, luge — these are sports whose practitioners risk their lives virtually every time they push off, whether it's in a practice run or competition. The death Friday of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili during a training run just hours before the start of the Vancouver Games served as a tragic and unsettling reminder of the risks faced by high-performance Olympic athletes. Kumaritashvili's death was also an eerie echo of an event that marred his sport's introduction to the Olympic Games at the Innsbruck Olympics in 1964. There was opposition to including luge in the Games, with some arguing it put participants in too much danger. Their point was underscored two weeks before the Games began when a British luger — Polish-born Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski — died in a crash during a practice run on the Olympic track. Kay-Skrzypeski was not the only athlete to die in the leadup to the 1964 Olympics. Ross Milne, 19, an Australian downhill skier, was killed after careening off the course and smashing into a tree during a training run. Skiing also saw a death at the 1992 Albertville Games. Nicholas Bochatay, a Swiss speed skier, died after crashing into a grooming machine during a practice run. Speed skiing was a demonstration sport at those Olympics.Kumaritashvili's death is not the first at a Canadian Olympics. The chief doctor of the Austrian team, Jorg Oberhammer, was killed in an interval in competition at the 1988 Calgary Games when he collided with another skier and was knocked into the path of a snow-clearing machine.It has been 50 years since a Summer Games athlete has died during an Olympic competition, a fatality that occurred on the first day of competition in Rome. Danish cyclist Knut Jensen fell from his bicycle in the sweltering heat at the 1960 Olympics and hit his head on the road, dying later that day.The official cause of death was ruled as heatstroke, but an autopsy revealed the presence of amphetamines in his system, one of the events that helped spur a greater emphasis later in the decade on testing for performance enhancing drugs.Jensen was one of two Summer Games participants killed during competition in Olympics. Portuguese marathon runner Francisco Lazaro, 21, collapsed during his event in the 1912 Games and died the next day. The most famous Olympic deaths were not related to competition. At the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, 11 Israeli athletes, coaches and team officials were killed after being taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists belonging to a group called Black September.

[Citius Altius Fortius]

Accidents simply happen - The athletes that participate in these sports know the risks.

Exactly...

[mr.x]

...the average person would be scared sh!tless to fly off a ski jump, go down a luge track, barrel down an expert level ski slope course, etc...

[Citius Altius Fortius]

... and not only at Winter Games - go down a whitewater run - ride a bicycle on a track or street (not like people who ride it on sundays) - ride a bmx - horseriding - sailing

what is with motorsports, what is with bungee jumping....

[4seasonscentre]

I could have sworn a teacher told me that 2 people died during the Mexico City Olympics due to the high altitude.

[Sir Rols]

I could have sworn a teacher told me that 2 people died during the Mexico City Olympics due to the high altitude.

I don't think anyone died, but there was plenty of reaching for the ocxygen botles and some athletes had some very serious health problems.

Ron Clarke, the Australian 10,000m record holder, collapsd and had to get oxygen and to this day has suffered lung problems he say came from Mexico City.

[micheal_warren]

I could have sworn a teacher told me that 2 people died during the Mexico City Olympics due to the high altitude.

No one died in Mexico as far as I am aware. Many athletes suffered problems following the longer distance events

[baron-pierreIV]

I could have sworn a teacher told me that 2 people died during the Mexico City Olympics due to the high altitude.

Might've been student-protestors who were killed.

Also, X, I think you forgot the one or 2 horses that died in the heat of Rome 1960.

[Citius Altius Fortius]

Hundreds of people died and thousands were injured when ten days before the Opening Ceremony a demonstration was broke down on the "square of the three cultures" in Mexico City - the IOC declared that this is an internal affair of Mexico and that the Games will not be cancelled

Edited February 16, 2010 by Citius Altius Fortius