Sporting Tragedies

Sports Disasters

The Superga Tragedy, May 4th, 1949
Torino had just secured their record fifth back-to-back Serie A title and were returning from a friendly game against Benfica in Lisbon. The Avio Linee Italiane plane carrying the team flew into a thunderstorm on the approach to Turin and encountered conditions of low cloud and poor visibility. They were forced to descend to be able to fly visually. While descending the aircraft crashed against the base of the rear wall of the Basilica complex at the top of the hill of Superga. Of the entire first team squad only one player survived: Sauro Toma missed the trip due to injury. The club carried on by fielding its youth team for the final four games of the season, and in a sign of respect their opponents in each of these matches (Genoa, Palermo, Sampdoria, and Fiorentina) also fielded their youth sides. The disaster also seriously weakened the country's national side which had included up to 10 Torino players. Torino itself would not claim another title until 1976.

Munich Air Crash, February 6th 1958
The Munich air disaster took place on 6 February 1958, when British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on its third attempt to take off from a slush-covered runway at Munich-Riem Airport in Munich, West Germany. On board the plane was the Manchester United football team, nicknamed the ‘Busby Babes’, along with a number of supporters and journalists. Twenty of the 44 people on board the aircraft died in the crash, and three died later. The team was returning from a European Cup match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, against Red Star Belgrade, but had to make a stop in Munich for refueling. An investigation by the West German airport authorities originally blamed Captain Thain for the crash, claiming that he had failed to de-ice the wings of the aircraft, despite statements to the contrary from eyewitnesses. It was later established that the crash had, in fact, been caused by the build-up of slush on the runway, which had resulted in the aircraft being unable to achieve take-off velocity.

Bradford City Fire, May 11th 1985
Football ground writer Simon Inglis described the view from the stand at Valley Parade as "like watching football from the cockpit of a Sopwith Camel" because of its antiquated supports and struts. He also warned the club of a build-up of litter beneath the stand because of a gap between the seats. Bradford City were playing Lincoln City having already secured promotion. At 3:40 pm, five minutes before half-time, the first sign of a fire - was noticed three rows from the back of block G. It is believed the fire started when a spectator dropped a match, lit cigarette or tobacco, which fell through holes in the stand to rubbish which had accumulated below. Spectators initially felt their feet becoming warmer; one of them ran to the back of the stand for a fire extinguisher but found none. A police officer shouted to a colleague for an extinguisher. However, his call was misheard and instead the fire brigade were radioed. The call was timed at 3:43 pm. However, the fire escalated and flames became visible, and so police started to evacuate the stand. The blaze began to spread; the roof and wooden stands were on fire. One eyewitness, Geoffrey Mitchell, told the BBC: "It spread like a flash. I've never seen anything like it. The smoke was choking. You could hardly breathe.” The wooden roof, which was covered with tarpaulin and sealed with asphalt and bitumen, caught fire. The material combined with a strong wind to spread the fire along the stand creating the impression of a fireball, setting fire to the entire stand. Burning timbers and molten materials fell from the roof onto the crowd and seating below, and black smoke enveloped a passageway behind the stand, where many spectators were trying to escape. It took less than four minutes for the entire stand to be engulfed in flames. A total of 56 people died in the fire

Heysel, 29th May 1985
Liverpool had won four of the previous eight Euorpean Cup Finals. They were the premier team in Europe. The 1985 Cup final saw them pitted against Juventus. At approximately 7 p.m. local time, an hour before kick-off, the crowd trouble started. The Liverpool and Juventus supporters in sections Y and Z stood merely yards apart. The boundary between the two was marked by temporary chain link fencing and a central thinly-policed no-man's land. Missiles began to be thrown across the divide. Fans could pick up stones from the terraces beneath them: Heysel was a crumbling stadium and in no way suitable for European Cup Final. As kick-off approached, the throwing became more intense. A group of Liverpool fans charged across the terraces, through and over the wire fence into section Z causing the Juventus fans to retreat. Having no way out, the Juventus fans moved towards the side perimeter wall, near to the corner flag. Some tried to climb over the wall to escape. The wall could not withstand the force of the fleeing Juventus supporters and collapsed. 39 people died, and a further 600 were injured.

Ibrox, January 2nd, 1971
Sixty-six football fans  were killed following a match between Old Firm rivals Celtic and Rangers at the Ibrox Park stadium in Glasgow. The disaster occurred when crush barriers collapsed as thousands of fans made their way out of the stadium. Hundreds of Rangers fans began leaving the match early believing Celtic had won: Jimmy Johnstone had scored for Celtic with just a minute to go, but Colin Stein scored an equalising goal for Rangers during injury time causing a huge roar to erupt inside the stadium. According to eye-witnesses, fans attempting to get back up the stairs after hearing the roar, collided head-on with those coming down the stairs. Everyone was struggling to get out, suffocating - it was essentially a fight for survival Rescuers, who were on the scene within minutes, tried to force their way through the crowds, but their efforts were mostly in vain. One man who managed to struggle out of the crush, described the scene. "Everyone was struggling to get out, suffocating - it was essentially a fight for survival. After 10 or 15 minutes I was dragged out by a policeman and brought to hospital by ambulance."

Asante Kotoko and Hearts of Oak, May 9, 2001
126 people died in Africa's worst footballing disaster while watching a match between Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko. Trouble started when supporters of Asante Kotoko began ripping out seats in in protest at a goal allowed by the referee for Hearts of Oak, which they believe should have been disallowed for offside. As the end of the game approached Asante Kotoko fans then began to throw the seats onto the pitch. Police reacted by firing tear gas into the crowd. Reports suggest that the gates to the ground were locked and that the rush to escape the tear gas was a contributory factor to the death toll. A commission inquiry strangely failed to indict the hooligans in its report. The tragedy in Ghana was Africa's third football disaster in a month. Forty-three fans were crushed to death on April 11 when fans tried to force their way into Johannesburg's huge Ellis Park stadium midway through a top South African league match. And on April 30, at least seven people were killed and 51 seriously injured in a stampede in the Democratic Republic of Congo after police moved to break up rioting at a match in Lubumbashi.

Munich Olympics, Spetember 1972
The Munich massacre has now become common parlance for the events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually murdered by Black September, a militant group with ties to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization. The commando operation was officially named ‘Ikrit and Biram’, after two Christian Palestinian villages whose inhabitants had been killed or expelled in 1948. By the end of the ordeal, the terrorists had killed eleven Israeli athletes and coaches and one West German police officer. Five of the eight members of Black September were killed by police officers during a failed rescue attempt. The three surviving terrorists were captured, but later released by West Germany following the hijacking by Black September of a Lufthansa airliner. Israel responded to the massacre with Operation Spring of Youth and Operation Wrath of God, as well as a series of airstrikes and assassinations of those suspected of planning the kidnappings.

Marshall US Football Crash, November 14 1970
Southern Airways Flight 932 was a chartered Southern Airways DC-9 commercial jet flight from Kinston, North Carolina, to Ceredo, West Virginia. At 7:35 pm on November 14, 1970, the aircraft crashed into a hill just short of the Tri-State Airport, killing all 75 people on board. The plane was carrying 37 members of the Marshall University Thundering Herd football squad, eight members of the coaching staff, 25 ‘boosters’, four flight crew members, and one employee of the charter company. The team was returning home after a 17–14 loss against the East Carolina Pirates in Greenville, North Carolina. At the time, Marshall's athletic teams rarely traveled by plane, with most away games within easy driving distance of the campus. The team had originally planned to cancel the flight, but changed plans and chartered the Southern Airways DC-9