Survivors of air crash in team

Press, 14 October 1976, Page 1

Survivors of air crash in team

By

RON PALENSKI,

NZPA

staff correspondent Montevideo Two survivors of the 1972 Andes air crash which killed several leading Uruguayan rugby players were in the Uruguay team which played the All Blacks yesterday (New Zealand time). Sixteen of a party of 46 members of a Montevideo rugby club, Old Boys, survived the crash and weeks of waiting in the high Andes for rescue. The crash was in world headlines when it was revealed after the rescue that the survivors ate parts of their dead friends’ bodies to stay alive. Antonio Vizintin and Roberto Canessa, two of the players yesterday,

played prominent parts in organising the survival of the remaining members of the party, which spent several weeks in the freezing shell of the crashed aircraft. Canessa was one of the men who walked over the Andes and into Chile looking for help. “That crash was a tragedy for Uruguayan rugby,” a union official said yesterday. “Because of some people’s horror at the method of ensuring survival, it also gave us some bad publicity. But it is in the past now and we do not like to talk about it. Canessa and Vizintin and the other survivors now just want to try to forget, although they never will.” Match report, back page.