Not long after came a seismic jolt, the helicopter crash of Kobe Bryant in the fog-shrouded California hills that reverberated across sports and across continents. Deep into the year, a bookend to Bryant, Diego Maradona died from a heart attack in Argentina weeks after brain surgery, the waves of grief rippling across soccer. The losses, of course, came against a backdrop of a pandemic, its number of fatalities rolled out daily on TV screens. Niekro won 318 games and pitched until he was 48, his knuckleball dancing and mystifying batters across the decades. Kurt Thomas in 1978 became the first U.S. male gymnast to win a world title but lost an Olympic shot in 1980 because of the boycott.

Kurt Thomas, the first US male gymnast to win a world championship gold medal, died at the age of 64 on Friday, his family said in a statement. Kurt lived his life to the extreme, and I will be forever honored to be his wife," Beckie Thomas told International Gymnast Magazine. Thomas became the first US male gymnast to win a world title when he won the floor exercise in the 1978 world championships in Strasbourg, France. Thomas, born in Miami, attended Indiana State University to compete in gymnastics where he earned 13 All-American honors and led the university to an NCAA team title in 1977. He was elected into the Indiana State University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999, and inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2003.