Besides them, Nepal also lost former national cricket team captain Ganesh Shahi. Two young footballers met their untimely demise in an accident while another teenage footballer died of cancer recently. Here are some brief accounts of the sports personalities whom we lost within the last one year. [break]
Sharad Chandra Shah
Sharad Chandra Shah was a sports leader par excellence under whose capable leadership Nepal achieved its biggest feat in international event, till date, with an eight-medal (all bronze) haul during the 10th Asian Games in South Korea in 1986. Shah, who was at the helm of the National Sports Council and Nepal Olympic Committee from 1977 to 1988, is also credited for building stadiums and covered halls in different parts of the country -- an achievement which neither his predecessors nor those after him have paralleled. He was considered to be an undisputed visionary in the Nepali sports sector.
His 11-year tenure is said to be the ´Golden Age´ of Nepali sports. He passed away at the age of 64 while undergoing treatment for stomach related ailments in Singapore.
Laxman Shumsher Thapa
Laxman Shumsher Thapa is remembered for establishing the first ever boxing institute in the country, Kamal Pokhari Boxing Club, about 51 years ago. It was Thapa who took the initiative to take boxing - a sports limited exclusively to nobility in Nepal - to the masses in 1961. It was also during his tenure as the president of Nepal Boxing Association in 1976 that the country´s boxing governing body got international recognition.
His contribution to Nepali boxing does not end there as he was the one to assemble all the raw talents of Nepal to forge an alliance, train them and form a strong base for boxing in the country. He had organized Nepal´s first international boxing tournament at the Rastriya Sabha Griha in 1971 during which players from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Argentina participated. It was his student Umesh Maskey who secured Nepal´s first boxing medal (bronze) at the international level during the Ninth Asian Boxing Championship held in India in 1980. Thapa died of heart attack at the age of 68.
Bhupendra Silwal
The achievements of Bhupendra Silwal, one of the first Olympians of Nepal who ran in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics along with Ganga Bahadur Thapa, were forgotten stories for decades until he received the NSJF Pulsar Lifetime Achievement Award in the twilight of his life in 2012. Silwal had raised quite a few eyebrows in the 1958 Asian Games where he ran barefoot to finish the marathon in the seventh position.
The former army serviceman got a glimpse of the London Olympics just in time before parting from this world forever at the age of 78. Silwal died following an operation for a tumor in his stomach at the Army Hospital. He was suffering from multiple aliments and did not regain consciousness after the operation.
Ganesh Shahi
Former Nepali national cricket team captain Ganesh Shahi, who led the Nepali squad during the ICC Trophy (World Cup Qualifier) in 2001 in Canada, died of liver problems in India at a relatively young age of 40. He was a regular member of the national team since 1996 to 2001. Shahi was the wicketkeeper of the Nepali national squad, when it played the first official international match in 1996 during the First ACC Trophy.
Shahi played 14 One-Day matches for Nepal and scored 226 runs with the average of 22.6. His highest score was 68 runs against the UAE at Sharjah in 2000.
Sagar Pariyar
Sagar Pariyar, a promising youth footballer who was critically injured in a bus accident at Maheshkhola of Dhading, succumbed to his injuries in August. ANFA U-14 left back Pariyar from Waling, Syangja, had sustained serious head injury in the accident. He was returning to Kathmandu after sitting for SLC supplementary exams. Pariyar´s coach Bal Gopal Maharjan remembers him as disciplined, sincere, physically strong and polite player.
Ranjan Thapa
Footballer Ranjan Thapa from Pokhara was among the nine passengers who died on the spot in a bus accident at Maheshkhola, Simle of Dhading. The U-14 footballer was returning to ANFA Academy, Kathmandu from Butwal after sitting for the supplementary SLC examination.
Kumar Lama
Former Bauddha FC´s teenage footballer Kumar Lama, who was suffering from Femur cancer for over a year died recently at the B & B Hospital in Lalitpur. He developed the malignant tumor after a knee injury during A-Division League match last season. He received Rs 111,200 as financial support from well wishers in the US while his family members say that they spent Rs 1.5 million for his treatment on their own after their plea was turned down by the player´s former club.
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