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Two Argentine pilots and eight French nationals, including three French sports starts, were killed when two helicopters crashed in Villa Castelli, Argentina, en route to filming for a reality TV show.
Yachtswoman Florence Arthaud, Olympic swimmer Camille Muffat and Olympic boxer Alexis Vastine perished in the crash while heading to a remote location to film a French reality show called
Dropped, whose premise is based on flying celebrities to hostile environments and filming their attempts to survive. Aside from Arthaud, Muffat and Vastine, the cast included other famous athletes and Olympians, including swimmer Alain Bernard, figure skater Philippe Candeloro, cyclist Jeannie Longo, footballer Sylvain Wiltord and Swiss snowboarder Anne-Flore Marxer.
Each helicopter was carrying a pilot and four passengers. Seconds after take-off, the helicopters were involved in a mid-air collision only 330 feet from the ground. The cause of the crash is unknown, however,
an amateur video of the incident [
op note: may be disturbing to some viewers]
appears to show the lower helicopter climbing at a rapid rate, colliding with the other helicopter from below.In addition to the athletes, five members of the production crew were also killed: Laurent Sbasnik, Lucie Mei-Dalby, Volodia Guinard, Brice Guilbert and Edouard Gilles. The Argentine pilots were named as Juan Carlos Castillo and Roberto Abate.
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Muffat, Arthaud and Vastine are pictured together on the right of the photoSome of the contestants have tweeted the shock and grief at the death of their compatriots:
Alain Bernard, who gained notoriety in the US during the 2008 Olympics for
trashtalking, the subsequently
losing to, the American relay team,
gave an interview where he said that he was originally supposed to be on one of the helicopters, but decided at the last minute not to climb onboard, as it looked overloaded. Initial reports claimed that Bernard, Candeloro and Wiltord had been killed in the crash, despite Wiltord having been eliminated from the competition already; Wiltord was in Paris at the time of the crash.
Initial reports stated that contestants were waiting, blindfolded, on the ground at the time of the accident and did not directly witness the collision.
However, Bernard confirmed that the other contestants were not blindfolded and that they were waiting on the runway when they heard a loud bang and saw smoke.rewritten from
bbc and
le parisien
