The Seattle Sockeyes don't like to dwell on crushing sports moments. Most of the time, there's another opportunity to regain glory... except in cases like this...
In the early 90s, long before streaming and cable packages that allowed you to watch any sport you desired, F1 was surprisingly accessible.
Teenaged CF88 was obsessed and one driver had the perfect combination of skill and thrill that, frankly, has never been repeated. He was a three time world champion heading into the 1994 season, but shocked the racing world with a move to long time rival, Williams.
The season started poorly. This driver was on the pole for the first two races, but didn't finish either. He didn't like his car, prophetically saying "It's going to be a season with lots of accidents, and I'll risk saying that we'll be lucky if something really serious doesn't happen."
Saturday's qualifying for the third race of the season put a black cloud over the sport, with young Austrian driver, Roland Ratzenberger, crashing at a speed over 300kph and dying instantly.
Sunday morning, in the aftermath of Saturday's tragedy, two famous drivers met to discuss the formation of a driver's union to enhance safety measures and prevent things like this from occurring. In the afternoon, one of those drivers would be dead, himself.
Starting from pole, again, he led through the first 6 laps of the race and then the unthinkable happened. He lost control, went off the racing line, and struck a barrier at over 233kph. It is estimated that in just a few minutes after the accident, he had lost over 90% of his blood. He was airlifted to hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Heartbreakingly, an Austrian flag was found in his cockpit, which he was to wave on the victory lap post-race in honour of Ratzenberger.
All of this left me stunned, watching it live on television. The Sockeyes are saddened to immortalize as our crushing sports moment, the
death of Ayrton Senna. To that point in my life, I had not had any close relatives or friends die. This was, indeed, crushing.
@BernieParent, over to you.