[Old School Hound]

We all love sports, of course. Sports provides us some relief from the daily grind that life can sometime be.  I can't imagine my childhood without the Cincy Reds, or Corbin Redhound football. However, as therapeutic as sports is for us, sometimes things go very, very wrong in sport. Serious injuries, or even death , are risks that athletes take to pursue their dreams. Is there a single event that you witnessed, either in person, or watching on TV that stands out to you as one of the worst moments you've witnessed in sports? Is there an event that profoundly affected you, in some capacity?


I'll start with an event that affected me in such a way that I can't remember really following the sport that much after the tragedy. My grandfather and I , in addition to enjoying watching Reds baseball together, would watch two sporting events every year. One, was the annual Army-Navy football game(we always rooted for the Army) and the other was the Indianapolis 500.

The '82 Indy 500 is about the last one I can recall, and for all the wrong reasons.  Gordon Smiley lost his life during a qualifying run. It still remains the most horrifying car crash I have ever seen in my life. The car literally disintegrates upon impact with the wall at over 185 mph. Pieces of the car and Smiley were strewn all over the track. Someone found the top part of Smiley still inside the wreckage. He was said to have been "scalped by flying debris." Gray matter, originally thought to be oil, but later determined to be Smiley's brain matter was scattered over the track. This crash haunted my dreams for weeks afterward. I remember a guy I went to school with who died in a high speed, fiery crash, just outside of Corbin back in the 70's I remember us going to some lot  and seeing the charred remains of the car(along with possibly some body parts) he had been riding in at the time of the crash. That was haunting, much like the Smiley crash several years later. Just really creeped me out.

Here's the Smiley crash. It's really, REALLY bad... VERY disturbing images.