'Cursed' amateur German club mourns deaths
Sports
By
AFP
| Mar 27, 2017
A German sports club is mourning the deaths of two amateur sportsmen who suffered heart attacks on successive days, leaving team-mates wondering if the club is cursed.
Last Wednesday, 24-year-old footballer Hannes Rumpker suffered a heart attack while training with his local team in the north-west German town of Edewecht, near Bremen, and later died in hospital.
The club, VfL Edewecht, called off a regional league match out of respect.
Then on Thursday, Arne Hobbie, 33, who played for and ran the club's basketball team, Edewecht Wattworms, also suffered a heart attack while training.
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He was revived by emergency services, but later died in hospital.
Like the grieving footballers before them, the mourning basketball team also called off a key match, which would have decided promotion.
The tiny town of Edewecht, which has a population of 21,000, is in shock.
"For us, the whole thing is still completely surreal," Hobbie's team-mate Henning von Aschwege told regional newspaper Nordwest Zeitung.
"After the death of Hannes, it's like a curse is hanging over us."
Club official Ute Meinen added: "We have never experienced such a thing before.
"We do not really know how to deal with the situation."