Leading sporting deaths of 2023

PARIS: As sportsmen and women set their goals for 2024, others who achieved theirs in the past died.

AFP Sports highlights some of those whose stars were extinguished in 2023:

Tori Bowie

Bowie went from the glory of being crowned women´s 100 metres world champion in 2017 in London to fading from sight. So much so, it took days for local authorities to check on her and find her dead aged just 32 in late April at her home in Florida, due to complications related to childbirth.

Bowie -- who won Olympic 4x100m relay gold in 2016 to add to a bronze in the 100m and silver in the 200m -- had fought her way to the top inspired by her grandmother, Bobbie Smith, who brought up her and her younger sister.

“We didn´t have much but she gave us character,” said Bowie, who shortened her first name from the unusual Fentorish.

Her death rattled many with US track superstar Noah Lyles declaring: “This breaks my heart.”

Dick Fosbury

The man who revolutionised the high jump died aged 76 of lymphoma on March 12.

“The word legend is probably used too often,” US athletics icon Michael Johnson posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Dick Fosbury was a true LEGEND!”

Johnson was spot-on with his analysis for the lad from Portland who began experimenting on how to tackle the high jump aged just 16.

He ended up with a strategy immortalised as the “Fosbury Flop” and remains to this day the standard technique used by elite high jumpers.

Instead of tackling the bar head on, the 6ft 4in Fosbury would arc towards the bar on his run-up before taking off backwards and “flopping” over the bar.

The technique was rewarded with Olympic gold in Mexico in 1968.

“He literally turned his event upside down,” said former US high jump coach John Tansley in 1980.

Greg Foster

The three-time 110m hurdles world champion died aged 64 on February 19, a month afer undergoing a heart transplant.

A titan of the discipline in a golden era for the US as he and Roger Kingdom dominated the major championships, Foster won three successive world crowns from 1983 to 1991.

Olympic glory eluded him, however, as Kingdom won that title twice in 1984 and 1988 with Foster having to be content with a silver behind his compatriot in Los Angleles in 1984 when he fatally hesitated at the gun.

Foster was relatively chilled about missing out on Olympic gold. “To be second best in something is a lot more than people think,” Foster said.

“How many people can say they were second best in the world at something very difficult?”

Bishan Bedi

Indian cricketing hero who was part of the famous spin quartet of Erapalli Prasanna, Srinivas Venkataraghavan and Bhagwath Chandrasekhar died on October 23 aged 77 after a long illness.

Left-arm spinner Bedi claimed 266 wickets in 67 Tests in an illustrious international career between 1967 and 1979.

He went on to become coach of the national side with a young Sachin Tendulkar beginning his extraordinary international career.

“To Bishan Paaji (elder brother), I wasn´t just another cricketer; I was like a son. Under his nurturing guidance, I scored my first 100 in England,” Tendulkar wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“The world seems a little emptier without you, Paaji.”

Heath Streak

One of Zimbabwe´s greatest cricketers who took 236 Test wickets -- no other Zimbabwean bowler has taken more than 80 -- died of cancer aged 49 on September 3.

His career had ended in ignominy when he received an eight-year ban from the International Cricket Council (ICC) for passing on information and contact details of players to an unnamed Indian man -- Streak though denied he had been involved in match-fixing.

Streak was an outstanding fast bowler and capable batsman. He was a key member of Zimbabwe teams that were competitive against cricket´s bigger nations in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

He showed the same fight as he battled liver and colon cancers and had to rebut claims he had died earlier in the year.

“RIP Streaky. You were a titan,” former teammate Henry Olonga posted on Facebook.

Bobby Charlton

One of English football´s all-time greats and one of the last of the only England side to lift the World Cup died aged 86 after an accidental fall at a care home on October 21.

The Manchester United legend had been diagnosed with dementia -- just as his late brother and fellow 1966 World Cup winner Jack had been -- in 2020.

A survivor of the 1958 Munich air crash which killed eight of his team-mates, Charlton helped United win two league titles and their first European Cup in 1968.

Alex Ferguson -- who was Charlton´s pick to be United manager in 1986 -- said he “was the greatest English player of all time”.