A look at unanswered questions sportspeople left behind after their death
On March 4 this year, the world bid farewell to legendary Australian cricketer Shane Warne. He was at a villa in Thailand with friends where he was found unresponsive. Sadly, by the time an ambulance arrived and he was taken to a hospital, he was no more. The sudden death of the cricketer sent shockwaves across the sports world. Though the reason for his death has been given as a heart attack, it is somewhat hard to digest since he was a sportsperson, and only 52 years old.
Besides Warne there have been mysterious deaths of famous sports persons and today we will be talking about them.
Darren Partch
Hockey player Darren Partch was a Toronto native. He was 38 years old when he was found dead alongside his friend Wendi Miller. Their bodies were discovered by their friend inside a locked apartment with no signs of forced entry. Whatever happened to Partch and Miller still remains a mystery.
Erica Blasberg
A rising golf star Erica, climbed up through the amateur ranks in golf to become a pro player before hitting a wall at the LPGA level. In the mid-2000s, she was struggling to go beyond her average score and was dealing with depression
and insomnia. Then came the news of her death. Everyone thought that Erica had committed suicide because of the suicide note and forensic evidence, but during investigation, her doctor was arrested for tampering with evidence. Erica’s family still has doubts about the cause of death of their daughter.
Lorenzen Wright
Wright was an NBA player who had bounced between many teams for 13 years. His playing career ended in 2010 when he disappeared for 10 days. His wife claimed that he had left home in panic, but a 911 call record had him on the line running and out of breath, gunshots were audible in the call. All this information didn’t come out during the initial investigation when his body was found. The case went cold for seven years till finally Wright’s wife plead guilty for his murder. The reason- a million-dollar insurance policy.
Pat Tillman
Pat was a kind of an American hero because though he was a professional football player, post 9/11, he gave up that career to enlist in the US armed forces. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan where his death was announced on April 22, 2004 due to enemy fire. This turned out to be a false story. The truth came out later that he was killed by a fellow soldier in a horrifying accident in an ambush. Since then, conspiracies have been doing the rounds about Tillman’s death.
Jack Lovelock
Lovelock was a gold medalist of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, winning a gold in the 1500m racing event with world-record timing. Jack died 13 years after his Olympic feat, supposedly affected by ill health and depression. He died by jumping onto the tracks of the New York subway. Speculations were made about his death and many believed that he had committed suicide while others believed that he died due to poor eyesight and his death was an accident. These were some of the top athletes whose deaths have either remained a mystery till now or there have been lot of questions around the way they died. I will just leave you with this shocking fact according to an article in the Diario de Vallarta & Nayarit, a Mexican media house, more than 75 athletes have died in the last five months of 2021 - all these were unexpected deaths.