When sport is a dark tale: Rohan Dennis who killed his wife and others

When sport meets crime news the noise is always that of a broken dream, which is shattered and brings with it the illusion of a lost innocence. This happens because in the territory of sport we cultivate – all of us – the utopia of a world where an idea of ​​play (and life) wins which is never polluted by pain, death, the corruption of the spirit. However, this is not the case at all. Sport is life in rerun, so even in this context crimes, acts of violence, murders, attacks, scams and crimes have occurred. And unfortunately it happens that the champion is guilty of a heinous crime. As news that two-time world champion Rohan Dennis has been arrested for the murder of his wife Melissa Hoskins (also a former world champion) should be recorded together with many other cases in which, after the initial amazement, the overlapping of memories takes over.

The Australian Dennis (33 years old) killed his wife Hoskins (32) by hitting her with the van, speeding up on purpose: after the arrest, Rohan Dennis was released on bail. The first hearing of the trial has been set for March 13. Dennis retired in September 2023, Hoskins in 2017. They married in 2018, and together they had two children.

From champions loved all over the world to front page monsters, history repeats itself in a loop which – when sport becomes crime news – is based on some events that have caused a sensation. The latest one was the one in February 2013 which featured the most famous Paralympic athlete in the world, the first to compete in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, i.e. Oscar Pistoriuswho killed his girlfriend with four gunshots Reeva Steenkamp. For that crime Pistorius was sentenced to thirteen years and six months, he is serving his sentence in South Africa but last November he already obtained (amid much controversy) parole.

It was Valentine's night in 1988 when the Argentine boxer Carlos Monzon – after a violent argument – he punched, then strangled and threw his third wife, the model Alicia Muniz, off the terrace. It was a case that at the time encouraged Argentine women to report domestic violence (femicide was not talked about at the time).

A few years later – in June 1994 – the former American football champion O.J. Simpson he became the main suspect in the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her partner Ronald Lyle Goldman. His escape was the television event of the year and the subsequent trial was among the most talked about of the century. Acquitted in 1995, OJSimpson was found guilty in the civil trial and therefore forced to compensate the victims' families.

The Brazilian goalkeeper Bruno Fernandes de Souza instead he was recognized as the instigator of the murder of his lover, Eliza Samudio: he had threatened her, he wanted to force her to have an abortion, but the woman had refused. Poor Eliza was fed to two Rottweilers, the doorman sentenced to 20 years and 9 months. In that same period in England, the brutal murder of 15-year-old Megan Leigh Peat took place, killed with 60 stab wounds by Stoke City midfielder, 18-year-old Andrew Hall. At the end of the massacre she had committed – killing her wife and son – the Canadian wrestler Chris Benoit he committed suicide.