Ex-NFL star Junior Seau was found dead in his California home on Wednesday, according to a variety of sources who are also reporting that the police suspect his death to be a suicide. Here he is with Tom Brady in 2009, the last year he played in the NFL.
Whistler says goodbye to Sarah Burke
The dull grey skies over Blackcomb Mountain were punctuated by the staccato rhythm of helicopter blades Tuesday afternoon in a solemn flyby tribute for fallen freeskier Sarah Burke.
It was her “moment of noise” rather than silence — a salute to the 29-year-old who lived life larger than most, defying the odds of gravity in the superpipe and setting new heights for women freeskiers around the world.
Close to 200 of Burke’s family and friends, candles in hand, lined Blackcomb’s superpipe. It was their private goodbye in Whistler to the world champion and four-time X Games gold medallist who died three months ago to the day, after a fall in a superpipe in Utah. Photo: Bonny Makarewicz for Postmedia News
Former Mets manager Yogi Berra and former Mets catcher Gary Carter meet on the field for a post-game ceremony after the last regular season baseball game ever played in Shea Stadium against the Florida Marlins on September 28, 2008. Carter died on Thursday at the age of 57. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Hall of Fame catcher (and former Montreal Expos great) Gary Carter died on Thursday at the age of 57 after a long battle with brain cancer. Here is a look at his legacy, in photos. (Photo: Montreal Gazette files)
Students leave notes on a cardboard cutout of former Penn State Football coach Joe Paterno in the Pattee and Paterno Libraries on the campus of Penn State on January 24, 2012 in State College, Pennsylvania. Paterno, who was 85, died due to complications from lung cancer on Jan. 22. Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images
Paterno’s legacy is not so simple
Bruce Arthur: True to the final months of his life, Joe Paterno came to a complicated end. He was fighting lung cancer, everybody knew that. But the Penn State student news site OnwardState.com reported Saturday night that the iconic ex-football coach had died; the report multiplied on Twitter before being quickly quashed by a family spokesman. People in State College, Pa., had already been quietly speculating that he had died Saturday morning. As he did when he was a coach, staying in charge of Penn State until the age of 84, Joe Paterno made everybody wait.
And when he died Sunday morning Joe Paterno was 85, and his legacy was what was left, and it was no longer simple.
Sarah Burke: Too young, too smart, to go that way
Canada’s women’s soccer team stands for a moment of silence to remember freestyle skier Sarah Burke prior to their Olympic qualifying soccer game against Haiti in Vancouver. Burke passed away earlier on Thursday following a training accident last week.
From the Post’s Joe O’Connor: Her death stings, because it is unfair, because Sarah Burke was too young and too smart and too pretty and too warm and too well-liked and too remarkable, as an athlete, to leave us so soon.
Plug her name into Youtube and watch clips of the 29-year-old B.C. skier taking flight, blasting out of a superpipe and soaring up, up, with the blue sky as a backdrop and gravity, an earthly annoyance, as her only limit.
Ms. Burke twists. Twirls. Flips. She makes us gasp, and it is amazing to see, especially now, knowing that every clip is a reminder and a memorial to a gifted skier who pushed the boundaries of her sport.
Pushed them so hard and so far that Ms. Burke won four X-game titles, five World Cups and a world championship. She is the reason why the Olympic old boys club added women’s ski halfpipe to the program for Sochi 2014. (Photo: REUTERS/Andy Clark)
Sarah Burke in pictures
Considered one of the leading half-pipe athletes in the world, Burke was among the early favorites to win the Olympic gold medal in her sport at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia.
She died at age 29 on Thursday from injuries suffered after a serious fall during a training run in Utah. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
Canadian skier Sarah Burke dead at 29
Sarah Burke, the skiing star who was badly injured in a training accident in Utah last week, has died from her injuries, the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association announced on Thursday.
The Midland, Ont. native was in an induced coma after suffering a serious injury during a training run at Utah’s Park City Mountain Resort on Jan. 10. She was 29.
“As the result of Sarah’s fall, she suffered a ruptured vertebral artery, one of the four major arteries supplying blood to the brain. The rupture of this artery led to a severe intracranial hemorrhage, which caused Sarah to go into cardiac arrest on the scene. Emergency personnel responded and CPR was administered on the scene during which time she remained without a pulse or spontaneous breathing,” the association said in a statement from Burke’s publicist.
While it appeared there was brainstem function after the injuries, subsequent tests showed Burke had “sustained severe irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest.” Photo: Danny Moloshok/Reuters