The murder of Corinne Rey-Bellet comes as a deep shock to the Swiss sporting fraternity, the skiing community and sports world at large. Her brother Alain has also been shot dead while her mother is seriously injured. Swiss police are hunting for Rey-Bellet’s husband, with whom relations appear to have been strained.

Swiss Info reports:

Rey-Bellet was considered one of the world’s best skiers when she retired three years ago. She hung up her skis in 2003 due to injury but not before winning silver in the women’s downhill at the world championships in St Moritz – the high point of her decade-long career.

In all she won five World Cup titles, memorably winning both the downhill and the super-G on the same day in St Anton, Austria, in 1999. What was all the more remarkable about her historic double was that she hadn’t made the podium since finishing third in the giant slalom at Crans Montana in 1992.

A sad loss at a very young age. I hope the perpetrator(s) of the crime is/are found and punished though life lost can never be replaced.