Between the Rugby World Cup, the Us Open, and the return of football to our televisions, my head is spinning with the sheer volume of quality sport that’s currently on offer around the globe. The deluge of media coverage is impossible to avoid, however, amongst the meaningless rugby predictions from so called experts, and childish forum bickering about just how useless Andy Carroll may or may not turn out to be, passed one of sport’s greatest tragedies. As many of you may have read, on September 7th a renovated cargo plane carrying Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, one of Russia’s most successful ice hockey clubs, crashed, and with it perished 43 lives. While so many of us speak and think so passionately about sport, the demise of this tragic club deserves the reflection of a community that far exceeds the sporting world.
En route to Minsk for the team’s KHL ( Russia’s professional hockey league) season opener, the team plane, a notoriously dodgy Yak-42, is alleged to have struck a radio mast and plummeted in to the murky waters of the Volga river, extinguishing the ball of fire the plane had become. Two survivors aside, 36 Lokomotiv players and staff as well as 7 crew members lost their lives in what was an indescribable tragedy and undoubtedly hockey’s darkest day. While the club and the players’ names will of course be foreign to the casual Irish sports fan, one needs only look to the poignancy and sadness still attached to Manchester United’s fateful Munich disaster in 1958 to grasp the scale of this painful turn of events. While the suggestion that one disaster is worse than the other is crass and distasteful, the comparison of these two events is inevitable, so imagine for a second United supporters woke up one morning to discover that the club they adored was wiped from the map, the players that provided them with so much joy and anguish no longer for this world.
Situated 250 kilometers north of Moscow, Yaroslavl is an isolated city whose inhabitants derive great pride from Lokomotiv; a constant source of conversation and emotion. Labourers, Professionals, and Students all held the team as a cohesive and mutual love. Although the loss of any life is tragic, Lokomotiv was considered the pulsing heart of this Russian outpost; a heart that has been snatched clean out. Although I’ve yet to see a confirmed report, the mother of 21 year old player Sergei Ostapchuk is said to have suffered a fatal heart attack when informed of her son’s terrible fate. It’s impossible to comprehend the widespread mourning of the victims’ family and friends, however, her demise serves well to portray the resounding hurt and sadness that has rumbled through loved ones, the club’s supporters, the sporting community, and Russia.
Counted amongst the victims are veterans who played at the highest level for club and nation, as well as youth prospects who’s potential will never be fulfilled; Russians, Belarusians and Canadians were amongst the tapestry of nationalities that made up the squad and coaching staff.
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of this story is the necessary flaws that were willfully ignored, and are ultimately to blame. Professional hockey in Russia is a far cry from the luxurious lifestyle lead by athletes playing in sports leagues throughout Europe and North America. While the biggest football clubs in England, Spain, and Italy charter their own private jets, players in the KHL risk their lives every time they have an away fixture. The aforementioned Yak-42 which was carrying the team is considered one of the worlds least safe aviation vehicles, however, it was allowed to fly by Russian Authorities who have in 2011 alone witnessed eight fatal crashes within the country’s borders. No sport is worth the continual gambling of lives; if your club can’t afford to safely transport their staff to and from matches, it’s time to shut up shop. Hockey is wildly popular in Russia, and the decision to save a few extra rubles on transport was born out of greed and disregard for the players who lined the club’s owner’s pockets. Hopefully this incident will serve as a wake up call to the authorities and chairmen overseeing these matters, because the greatest tragedy of all would be to see the death of these players serve no purpose at all.
While drastic changes are needed with immediate effect, it is difficult to wade through the desolation and imagine a future for this club with 62 years of history. How do you begin to salvage spirit from such devastation? The official word from the Russian hockey federation is that they “will do their best to ensure that hockey in Yaroslavl does not die, and that it continues to live for the people that were on that plane.” While in time the community will recover and forge ahead, hockey in Yaroslavl will always carry the burden of this horrific tragedy; however, sport unquestionably can serve as a catalyst for healing, an outcome as sports fans we should all be rooting for.
