PARIS, Dec 7: Just as sportsmen live their lives in the spotlight of the world’s back pages, their slayings are guaranteed to dominate the headlines on the front.

The death at the hands of pirates of yachtsman Peter Blake in the Amazon on Thursday is a case in point and he joins a long, depressing list of sportsmen and women who have met violent ends.

The most notorious outrage was the murders of eleven Israeli athletes by the Black September group at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 - the largest Olympics in history at the time with 121 nations and over 7,000 athletes involved.

Eight Arab terrorists carried out the attacks - five of whom were then shot dead by West German police. The deaths led to a day and a half pause in the proceedings to allow a memorial service to be held before the IOC ordered the Games to carry on.

The atrocity in Germany was not the last time that the Games were stained by blood.

At Atlanta in 1996, a bomb in the city’s Centennial Park killed one woman and injured 111 people.

Footballers also have suffered - the worst example being that of Colombia’s Andres Escobar whose own goal in the 1994 World Cup finals led to his assassination.

The Colombian defender was gunned down outside a Medellin nightclub on July 2, 1994, days after accidentally scoring an own goal.

The 27-year-old was shot 12 times as one of the gunmen shouted, “Goal! Goal!”

His ‘crime’ - scoring the own goal that gave the United States a 2-1 win in the tournament. It was a result that gave the Americans a place in the second round and sent the Colombians, pre-tournament favourites.

In recent years, Russian sportsmen have been gunned down in a series of killings.

In January, ice hockey ace Sergei Zemchyonok, 24, was shot dead in the hallway of his home as a large part of Russian sport continued to be funded with cash from dubious business practices.

The goaltender was just one of a series of high-profile killings in Russia.

In 1997, Valentin Sych, the president of the national ice hockey federation was shot dead while Larisa Nechayeva, financial director of Moscow Spartak, was also shot in the same year.—AFP